Rediscovering Genuine Islam ― The Case for a Quran-only Understanding

Based on the author’s earlier acclaimed work Exploring Islam in a New Light: A View from the Quranic Perspective, this compact volume with a new title seeks to provide a comprehensive, in-depth description of Islam in a bold new light through the lens of the Quran itself. The book presents a view of Islam that promotes tolerance, pluralism, and peaceful interreligious co-existence, justice, equality, compassion, and service to humanity – far too removed from a fanatic, militant, misogynistic, and cruel image in which it is so often portrayed in the West. The work is a blueprint for wide-ranging reforms in practiced Islam, not only in the arenas of sociomoral ethos and economic issues but also in various religious beliefs and practices. Its major focus is on how we can evolve spiritually – a subject that forms the core message of the Quran. It promotes human freedom, human rights, human initiative and enterprise, an exploitation-free free-market competitive economic system, a broad socioeconomic welfare mechanism to rid the world of poverty and deprivation, gender equality, and a humane justice system. A major contention of the book is that the Hadith is a major source of distortion of the message of the Quran. It provides a compelling critique of this literature. The message of the Quran, reinterpreted in the light of its worldview as well as taking account of the changing context and times, calls for fundamental reforms in numerous aspects of practiced Islam, including doing away with archaic, harsh shariah rules. Finally, the book suggests how we can bring about a revival of genuine Islam.