Preface

Abstract

Extract Who Is Allah? is the product of a lifetime engaged by Islam and subjects relating to Islamic thought and culture, society and politics, across centuries in myriad contexts. It is aimed at a popular audience, as well as regular readers of books in the Islamic Civilization and Muslim Networks series published by the University of North Carolina Press. The conventions of Arabic are kept to a minimum, with just the hamza and ʿayn used to reflect the distinctive accents of Arabic—or Persian or Turkish or Urdu—names and technical terms. In many instances English translations of common words are used after their first introduction in both Arabic and English. A major exception is the name Allah. It is not enough to say Allah=God if one seeks to acknowledge the complexity, and also explore the mystery, of Muslim performance of Allah. In this study, Allah is center stage at every level and in every chapter. And so, in order to stress the prevalence of Allah, I will occasionally parse words that combine Allah and another word into one that takes an Allah-specific form. Hence, at times bismillah will be written bismi(A)llah (“in the name of God”), and in-shallah (“if God wills, of God willing”) will appear as inshaʾ(A)llah. For Arabic speakers, this convention may seem redundant, but for those who are innocent of any knowledge of Arabic, it will be a constant reminder of how Allah is implanted in the deepest recesses of the Muslim imagination—across time, space, race, gender, and geography.