Introduction

The aim of this book is to investigate the rationality and plausibility of traditional Muslim conviction, a conviction inspired by the Quran, the founding document and scripture of Islam. The context of our largely philosophical investigation is supplied by industrialized and secularized western and westernized societies. This ambitious task has not been attempted by any Muslim or non-Muslim analytical philosopher in our times. One book cannot fully address this problem but it can articulate the anxiety and thus create a framework for a dialogue between the interested parties. The vaguely felt Muslim sense of intellectual unease in the secular world is here reduced to the precise project of developing tools for assessing, somewhat obliquely at times, the rationality of Islamic conviction.