Rethinking Issues in Islam

by Asghar Ali Engineer

The book considers some of the stereotypes regarding Islamic and Quranic injunctions and re-examines them in the light of verses from the Quran and the Sharia. Some of these are Islamic views on non-muslim communities, tolerance, family planning, etc. For most of the seventy-one years of his life, Asghar Ali Engineer has been a tireless soldier to the cause of national integration and communal harmony. Well-known today as a reformist, an activist and Islamic scholar, Asghar Ali Engineer received the Right Livelihood, or the ‘Alternative Nobel’, award in 2004 ‘. . . for promoting over many years in South Asia the values of religious and communal co-existence, tolerance and mutual understanding’. [Rightlivelihood.org]

Unknown Binding

About the author

Asghar Ali Engineer was an Indian reformist-writer and activist. Internationally known for his work on liberation theology in Islam, he lead the Progressive Dawoodi Bohra movement. The focus of his work was on (and action against) communalism and communal and ethnic violence in India and South Asia. He was an advocate of a culture of peace, non-violence and communal harmony, and lectured all over world.
Engineer also served as head of the Institute of Islamic Studies and the Centre for Study of Society and Secularism, both of which he founded in 1980 and 1993 respectively. He also made contributions to The God Contention, a website comparing and contrasting various worldviews. Dr. Asghar Ali Engineer’s autobiography A Living Faith: My Quest for Peace, Harmony and Social Change was released in New Delhi on 20 July 2011 by Vice President of India Shri Hamid Ansari.