WHY I AM AN ESSENTIALIST ABOUT ISLAM AND WHY THAT IS IMPORTANT?

Abstract

A few years ago, a book reviewer decried the fact that in the book he reviewed, Islam was “described in terms of a particular set of classical interpretations of Islamic sacred and legal literature.”  The reviewer lamented that “...defining a world religion like Islam in an essentialist manner is problematic” and that the book’s “essentialist view of Islam causes him to conceptualize and define Islam in a monolithic manner and disregard the significance of the actual diversity in faith and practice that exists within and across Islamic communities.