Qur’anic Foundations and Structure of Muslim Society

As matters stand in the Muslim world today, it is the decline of religious leadership from the Islamic standard in serious measure that constitutes a major cause of its inability with regard to its emergence from the abyss into which it has been descending since some time. The remedy for the situation is obvious.” – Fazlur Rahman Ansari, The Qur’anic Foundations and Structure of Muslim Society. The Quranic Foundations and Structure of Muslim Society was written by the distinguished Islamic scholar and Sufi Shaikh, Maulana Dr. Muhammad Fadlur Rahman Ansari (1914-1974), and was first published in Pakistan in 1973 just a few months before his death in 1974. It is not only a masterpiece of modern Islamic scholarship, but it also courageously identifies serious deficiencies in contemporary Islamic scholarship as one of the major causes of the decline of the Muslim world. The author of the book, who holds a doctorate in philosophy, was a graduate of Aligarh Muslim University, India, where he studied philosophy and religion. He derived his Islamic philosophical and spiritual thought from the outstanding Islamic scholar, Dr. Muham-mad Iqbal, as well as from his spiritual mentor, Maulana Abdul Aleem Siddiqui, and the great teacher who taught him Islam at the Aligarh Muslim University, Professor Syed Sulaiman Ashraf. The Qur’anic Foundations and Structure of Muslim Society was, in part, Maulana Ansari’s PhD thesis, and it was perhaps the most outstanding contribution to Islamic scholarship by any of the students of Iqbal. It also represented a significant response to Iqbal’s call for that ‘reconstruction of religious thought’. Maulana disclosed that Iqbal was himself the spiritual guide who guided him to the methodology with which he was able to pursue a sustained study of the Qur’an. It was that study which resulted in the production of this great work. The book is the best modern exposition of that dynamic orthodoxy in Islam and constitutes a textbook, workbook, and a veritable manual for survival of Muslims of the present age.