Machine summary:
Modern Things on Trial: Islam’s Global and Material Reformation in the Age of Rida, 1865-1935 Leor Halevi New York: Columbia University Press, 2019.
2 The author is metic ulous in contextualising Riḍā’s interventions across a range of controversial issues relating to modern objects and technologies, from toilet paper to the telegraph.
4 It is no coincidence that Riḍā shared many enemies with Wahhābī ʿulamāʾ in the early twentieth century: the nature of these sympathies is clear from such episodes as Riḍā’s defence of ʿAbd Allāh al-Qaṣīmī (d.
These differences are only partly explained by such factors as school loyalties, accessibility of style, Halevi notes that only a small number of modern objects provoked legal controversy; these mostly relate to commercial instruments, purity concerns, and articles of dress (262-264).
This is his underlying aim throughout the fatāwā reviewed in the book: the hope that Muslims will come to occupy their place among modern peoples, as it were.
It is impossible to do justice to Halevi’s Modern Things on Trial in so short a space, but one hopes this review has succeeded in conveying a sense of its impressive range, accessibility, and relevance.
This is an outstanding work that sets a new standard for the writing of modern Islamic intellectual history—even as the author insists that his focus is very much on material things.
This book will prove of enduring interest to re searchers in Islamic law and modern Islamic thought, historians of the late imperial and early nation-state Muslim worlds, and students of the pro cesses of Endnotes 1.