Islamic civilization Book

This book examines the development of medieval Islamic civilization which, at its peak between the 8th and 16th centuries, made enormous and innumerable contributions in the fields of science, philosophy, and the arts. This is then contrasted with the post-Islamic civilization extant today, which is riven by conflicts and confusion in its search for a true vision of Islam. Throughout the course of the book, author Asaf Hussain critically examines Islam as a faith, civilization, and history. He considers the vitally important questions of how the Islamic faith created its own civilization, and why it has fallen from that pinnacle of enlightenment into fundamentalism and terrorism in the contemporary world. The study addresses these questions by identifying the keys concepts from the Quran and the traditions of the Prophet Muhammad which opened the doors to Islamic civilization. Over the centuries, successive generations of Muslim rulers and some theologians have distorted these concepts for their own aims, and the region has subsequently become dominated by fundamentalism and sectarianism. Hussain concludes that, since Islam still exists as a major faith, to recreate Islam as a civilization, Muslims need to re-examine Western and fundamentalist models influencing their world and rediscover the original Islamic concepts which led to such achievement in earlier centuries. Only in this way can a new kind of Islamic civilization be developed for the 21st century.