Introduction: Against a Clash of Civilizations

A. Origin
 
I. A controversial religion
The hostile picture of Islam
The ideal picture of Islam
The real picture of Islam

II. Problems of the beginning
5000 years of Near Eastern high religions
Jews, Christians and Jewish Christians in Arabia
Abraham - the common ancestor of the 'people of the book'
 

B. Centre
 
I. God's word has become a book
The Qur'an - the centre of Islam
The Qur'an - a book come down from heaven?

II. The central message
There is no God but God
Muhammad is his Prophet
The Prophet as a leading figure

III. The central structural elements
Compulsory prayer
Tax for the poor, fasts, pilgrimage
 

C. History
 
I. The original Islamic community paradigm
Abiding substance of faith - changing paradigms
A religious vision realized
Religious and social transformation
From prophets to the Prophet-representative
The original community expanded
The beginnings of Islamic theology and law
The great crisis in the primitive community: the split into parties
 

II. The paradigm of the Arab empire
From Medina to Damascus: the new centre of power
The Shi'ite opposition
Imperial religious politics under the aegis of Islam
The origin of Islamic law
A new community made up of many peoples
A world empire comes into being
Theological dispute with political consequences
The crisis of the empire
 

III. The classical paradigm of Islam as a world religion
A new era begins
Classical Islam: a world culture
The formation of the 'traditions of the Prophet', the Sunna
The four great law schools
The second theological dispute: revelation and reason
The state and theology
The disintegration of the empire
 

IV. The paradigm of the Ulama and Sufi
After one empire, many states
The Ulama: legal schools become popular movements
The Sufis: mystic form themselves into brotherhoods
Sufism as a mass movement
Normative theology
Theological systems
The crisis of mediaeval Islam
 

V. The paradigm of Islamic modernization
Confrontation with European modernity
The great Islamic empires: Moghuls, Safawids, Ottomans
How Europe challenges Islam
Between reform and reaction
 

D. Challenges of the present
 
I. Competition between different paradigms
The secularist way
The Islamicist way
The socialist way
 

II. Which Islam do Muslims want?
Contemporaneity of competing paradigms
Questions to traditionalists, secularists, reformers
 

III. The Israel-Palestine conflict
Causes of conflict
Perspectives of hope
 

IV. New approaches to theological conversation
Methods of yesterday
Dialogue about Jesus
 

V. Speculative questions
Monotheism and Trinity
Reflection on the Bible
 

VI. From biblical criticism to Qur'anic criticism?
Literal revelation?
Critical exegesis
An understanding of the Qur'an which is sensitive to time
 

E. Possibilities for the future
 
I. Islamic renewal
The programme
Approaches towards realization
 

II. The future of the Islamic legal order
The challenge to traditional legal systems
Modern legal systems as a challenge
Religions and women - a relationship of tension
Reforms indispensable
 

III. The future of Islamic state order and politics
State and religion - united or separated
Secularity without secularism
Religion, violence and 'holy wars'?
War or peace?
 

IV. The future of the Islamic economic and social order
Is Islam the solution?
Islamic solutions rediscovered
Islam and the everyday world
Treading the tightrope between Islamicism and secularism
Controversies centred on the mosques
 

V. Islam: a picture of hope
From a hostile picture to a picture of hope
An enlightened sense of religion
The Muslim contribution to the dialogue between the cultures