ABSTRACT
Two main issues have been addressed in this book. First, we asked: what are the rhetorical differences between the written discourses of Yūsuf al-Qaraḍ āwī, ‘Amr Khālid and Muḥammad ‘Imāra, and how can these differences be conceptualized? The second question was what the rhetorical differences might mean when interpreted in the context of contemporary tensions in Islamic thought and practice. To my knowledge no systematic attempt has until now been made to explicate and interpret the rhetorical differences in the Islamic field. An important premise for this study has been that such mapping is necessary to better understand current Arab-Islamic culture. For if we accept that texts are constitutive of a culture, and also constituted by that culture, then such systematic investigations are one tool among others in understanding cultural phenomena. Accordingly, our main focus has not been on persuasive tools in themselves, but on the ways in which the use of them can be connected to social fields and religious ideology.
