Atlas al Hadarah al lslamiyah By Isma‘il R. al Faruqi and Lois Lamya al Faruqi, trans. Abdul Wahid Lu’lu’a. Maktabat Al Obaykan (Riyadh, Saudi Arabia) and The International lnstitute of Islamic Thought (Herndon, Va., USA), 1998, 754 pages.

Abstract

Atlas was first published in its original English edition in 1986. The collaboration
of Temple University, the International Institute of Islamic Thought
(IIIT), and the American Trust Publications with Macmillan made the publication
possible. At the time, the book clearly marked a qualitative leap in terms
of writings on Islamic culture and civilization. With its large format, over 500
pages, and hundreds of maps, tables, charts, chronologies, photographs, and
illustrations, it sought to catch the eyes (and minds) of a wide range of readers,
sacrificing little in the way of erudition or pertinent detail and shunning both
geographical and chronological arrangements. These two approaches, the
authors pointed out, would have been unsuitable for such a work, seeking to
highlight the “essence” of the Muslim experience in the midst of and despite
the bewildering diversity of that experience. Nor was the new venture merely
a blend of the two methods with their perceived “shortcomings,” but one which
followed the “phenomenological” method, where “the observer let[s] the phenomena
speak for themselves rather than force them into any predetermined
ideational framework.”
The Faruqis saw themselves as innovators in applying this method (traced to
Edmund Husserl and Max Scheler) to the study of Islam. The method was
advantageous as it allowed them to escape both the “epistemological ethnocentrism”
of Western Islamicists and the “uncritical” assumptions of Muslim
scholars. In the tradition of other Muslim harmonizers, and with a mix of genuine
humility and some unconscious trepidation, they also stressed that their
work was “a beginning.”
Surely Atlas was no starting point for the Faruqis. For many years they had
worked together, or individually, on many a project, book, and seminar -
papers on music, compendiums on world and Asian religions, books on Islam,
symposiums on the dialogue of the Abrahamic faiths. Their numerous intellectual
and academic achievements, including Isma‘il al Faruqi’s pivotal role in
the founding and empowerment of the IIIT, deserve far more coverage than
that provided by this cursory review. But the experiences and insights as well
as the team spirit they developed over the years, and through a great deal of
globe-trotting, were to stand them in good stead as they approached a task of
encyclopedic proportions. Indeed, any glimpse into the features of Atlas, one ...