Book Review: Sarah Stroumsa: Freethinkers of Medieval Islam​

Denoting the period around the third-fourth century after the hijrah (migration) of the Prophet of Islam to Madinah as "medieval", "early medieval Islam" and "early Islam"--all treated as near synonyms--this book explores "two paradoxes" of this era: (i) the relative marginal position accorded to two "freethinkers" of this period; and (ii) the vehemence with which Muslim thinkers supposedly attacked freethinking even though this was a "marginal and short-lived" phenomenon of the medieval Islam.

The two protagonists of Sarah Stroumsa's book are Abu Husayn Ahmad b. Yahya b. Ishaq ibn al-Rawandi (b. 205/815) and Abu Bakr Muhammad b. Zakariya' al-Razi (b. 251/865). Given the contemporary social and political realities, the subject matter of this book is, indeed, explosive, and given the fact that the two original texts related to this inquiry have not survived intact, "the likelihood of misinterpretation becomes almost a certainty", as Stroumsa herself informs us in her Preface. Yet, she then puts herself on the line, setting out with a deliberate care worthy of a medievalist, only to let it be blown to pieces as the minefields around her inquiry start to explode due to ambitious over-arching definitions and concepts.​

Journal of Islam & Science, Vol. 2 (Summer 2004) No. 1

Muzaffar Iqbal

Muzaffar Iqbal is the President of the Center for Islamic Sciences and the General Editor of the Integrated Encyclopedia of the Qurʾan.