MAHOMMEDANISM

New Zealand Listener, Volume 22, Issue 551, 13 January 1950, Page 15

MAHOMMEDANISM

MAHOMMEDANISM, by H. A. R. Gibb. Geoffrey Cumberlege, Oxford University Press (Home University Library). English price, 5/-. s ‘THIS little book (replacing an older '" Home University Library volume by Professor Margoliouth) does not deal directly, even in the chapter on "Islam in the Modern World," with those things about Mahommedanism which will be of most immediate interest to the majority of readers — contacts between Mahommedanism and Communism; relations between the Mahommedan countries and Palestine; the activities of the Moslem * League in India; modern Moslem countries and "human rights’ (freedom of religion, equality of women)-and others beside myself may be disappointed that no more than three sentences of it are devoted to the great Mahommendan

philosophers ofthe Middle Ages. Professor Gibb keeps strictly to the subject of the rise and growth of Islam as a relig-ion-its authorities, its sects and schools, the recurrent conflict within it of traditionalism and various forms of "modernigm." He gives us, in short, some of the indispensable preliminaries to a fuller understanding of the more "topical" aspects of Mahommedanism; and this he does clearly and well. In just one or two places he takes more for granted than perhaps he should, in a work for the general reader. He assumes, for example, that we all know exactly what a "Caliph" is, or was; but while no doubt we ought to, how many of us do?

A.N.

P.