Contemporary Islam is infected with sickness that is cutting it off from the richness of its own tradition and history. In this impassioned, erudite and deeply moving book, Abdelwahab Meddeb traces the genealogy of this malady and at the same time powerfully demonstrates the pluralist tradition at the heart of Islam. In so doing, he dismantles the common misconceptions of both western scholars of Islam and Islamic fundamentalists, and offers new paths for engagement between Islam and the West. Written in response to September 11, 2001, with an afterword addressing the war in Iraq, The Malady of Islam seeks to unravel today's Islamic fundamantalism which finds in the Qur'an only a summons to war.
