Truth2Life

In making the attempt we have adopted an approach which differs appreciably from that of more conventional writing in the field. First, our account of the formation of Islam as a religion is radically new, or more precisely it is one which has been out of fashion since the seventh century: it is based on the intensive use of a small number of contemporary non-Muslim sources the testimony of which has hitherto been disregarded.* Secondly, we have expended a good deal of energy, both scholastic and intellectual, on taking seriously the obvious fact that the formation of Islamic civilisation took place in the world of late antiquity, and what is more in a rather distinctive part of it. Finally, we have set out with a certain recklessness to create a coherent architectonic of ideas in a field over much of which scholarship has yet to dig the foundations.

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