Muslim Ethics and Modernity: A Comparative Study of the Ethical Thought of Sayyid Ahmad Khan and Mawlana Mawdudi

Toby Rupert was a librarian living in Toronto.

Khan was a nineteenth century liberal and an acculturationist who believed that reason guides the interpretation of Islam when revelation is insufficient. Mawdudi was a twentieth century fundamentalist, autocratic and anti-rational, who believed in self-revelations. Both were writers in the Indo-Pakistani Muslim tradition, presenting conflicting views and differing interpretations of ethics. Each has a different way of relating Islam to the present world. McDonough, who taught in Pakistan for three years at the Kinnaird Institute for Women, currently teaches in the Department of Religion at Concordia in Montreal. She has here presented an interesting treatise on the liberal-fundamentalist conflict within Islam, attempting to make more intelligible for non-Muslims the present-day dichotomy.