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Abstract

This essay serves as a personal reflection on the book, rather than a formal review, with the goal of extracting insights to navigate the current pressing issue of Islamophobia, which is a growing concern at the global level, including in India.
The book under discussion is authored by Abdur Raheem Kidwai, a former Professor of English at Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), who currently serves as the Honorary Director at the K.A. Nizami Centre for Quranic Studies at the same university.
The book draws primarily from the works authored by scholars like Norman Daniel (1919-1992), Fredrick Quinn (b. 1935), Mathew Dimmock (b. 1975), Adnan Muhammad al-Wazzan (1951-2024), Abdul-Settar Abdul-Latif Mal-Allah, and others. Notably, the first three are Christian scholars, while the latter two are Arab Muslim scholars. Prof. Kidwai draws from these works, especially al-Wazzan’s Surat al-Islam fi’l-Adab al-Inklizi, to achieve his goal of encouraging “the study of literary Orientalism, especially among the budding Muslim scholars of English studies.” (p. xii).