Muhammad Qasim Zaman is Robert H. Niehaus '77 Professor of Near Eastern Studies and Religion at Princeton University, New Jersey. He is the author of Religion and Politics under the Early Abbasids and The Ulama in Contemporary Islam, among other works.

• 1. Introduction; 2. Rethinking consensus; 3. The language of Ijtihad; 4. Contestations on the common good; 5. Bridging traditions: madrasas and their internal critics; 6. Women, law, and society; 7. Socioeconomic justice; 8. Denouncing violence: the ambiguities of a discourse; 9. Epilogue: the paradoxes of internal criticism.

'For those seeking to understand debates among Muslim scholars on contemporary political and social issues, I could hardly think of a more profound study than this one. Few scholars have the depth and reach to accomplish what Zaman does here, which is nothing less than a socio-history of modern Islamic thought. [He] returns again and again to the formative debates of the late nineteenth century to discuss a wide range of issues. A tour de force.' John R. Bowen, Dunbar-Van Cleve Professor, Washington University, St Louis, and author of A New Anthropology of Islam