Wednesday, September 14, 2005

the second message of islam

thanks to George Kelly, I found out about this page of links (books, journals, and articles) focusing on Islam and Africa. There is a good amount of interesting material there. Some of it on the scholarly side, dealing not just with "theology" but with culture and politics. And in multiple languages too (English, Spanish, French and Portuguese),

Right now, the piece which stands out the most for me is a pamphlet called: An Introduction To The Second Message of Islam, which briefly summarizes some of the ideas of Sudanese reformer Mahmoud Muhammad Taha. His basic idea seems to be that in the past, Muslim societies were only ready to implement a certain portion of the Quran. But in more recent times, after certain developments and changes have happened, we are able to understand and apply the Quran in a deeper way and we are ready for the "second message of Islam" which for Taha happens to include a vision of freedom, equality and democratic socialism.

1 comment:

Richard Cook said...

But his life was shortened by his opponents, because of his views. Why was that?