This book tackles the most significant issues facing Muslims today. Sachedina argues that we must reopen the doors of religious interpretation--to correct false interpretations, replace outdated laws, and formulate new doctrines. His book critically analyzes Muslim teachings on such issues as pluralism, civil society, war and peace, and violence and self-sacrifice.

This book tackles the most significant issues facing Muslims today. Sachedina argues that we must reopen the doors of religious interpretation--to correct false interpretations, replace outdated laws, and formulate new doctrines. His book critically analyzes Muslim teachings on such issues as pluralism, civil society, war and peace, and violence and self-sacrifice.

The topic of this book is vital to the understanding of contemporary developments in Iran and other areas of the Islamic world in which Shi'ism is a significant social and religious force. Islamic tradition in general speaks about the appearance of the Mahdi, or divinely guided messianic leader, from among the descendants of the prophet. In Shi'ism, belief in the Mahdi is the foundation on which the entire spiritual and temporal edifice rests.

Sachedina's purpose is to examine this key belief in the Mahdi and the doctrinal evolution of the idea of the Mahdi in early Imamite sources....

Biomedical ethics is a burgeoning academic field with complex and far-reaching consequences. Whereas in Western secular bioethics this subject falls within larger ethical theories and applications (utilitarianism, deontology, teleology, and the like), Islamic biomedical ethics has yet to find its natural academic home in Islamic studies.

In this pioneering work, Abdulaziz Sachedina - a scholar with life-long academic training in Islamic law - relates classic Muslim religious values to the new ethical challenges that arise from medical research and practice. He depends on Muslim legal...

In 1948, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted and proclaimed the International Declaration of Human Rights, a document designed to hold both individuals and nations accountable for their treatment of fellow human beings, regardless of religious or cultural affiliations. Since then, the compatibility of Islam and human rights has emerged as a particularly thorny issue of international concern, and has been addressed by Muslim rulers, conservatives, and extremists, as well as Western analysts and policymakers; all have commonly agreed that Islamic theology and human rights cannot...