Socrates famously said that the unexamined life is not worth living. In keeping with this dictum, taking ethics seriously means engaging with the real world where the human sense of right and wrong is daily tested. At their best, all faith traditions are challenged by such testing; and if faith-inspired ethics are thought to goven the whole of life, their guiding values need constantly to be interpreted by the believer to achieve a practical result. In the Muslim tradition, this is what the Qur'an really amounts to: a call to strive for belief with a social conscience. For fourteen centuries Muslim scholars have grappled with the implications of that call in matters of law, social practice and theology. And in our own time, the quests for civil society and the rule of law have much to do with the response given to these ethical questions. 'A Companion to Muslim Ethics' explores Islam's core conception of the good, shared with other great traditions. Leading experts examine issues such as gender equality, nonviolence, dispute resolution, the environment, health and finance. The volume will appeal to all those interested in how reason, faith and circumstance shape difficult moral choices in an increasingly globalised world.

What exactly is the Qur'an? How does this extraordinary document -- literally "recitation" -- relate to the life and times of the Prophet Muhammad? And why did the religion of the Prophet, which came to be called "Islam" (or submission to God's will), at the center of which lies the Qur'an, give birth to a legacy so richly diverse in faith, law and civilization? This immaculately researched, but at the same time thoroughly accessible, book offers a journey into the full range of experience -- past and present, secular and sacred -- of the peoples and cultures that share in Islamic tradition. The volume examines a broad diversity of themes and topics. Poets, cities and the architecture of mosques are as much a part of its exploration as the role of science in belief, ways of reading scripture, the relationship of women to the faith and the emergence of a "digital community" of believers. In the aftermath of 9/11, the so-called "war on terror" and a new global geopolitics defined by reaction and response to the perils of fundamentalism and extremism, it is imperative to understand -- across all its frontiers -- what Islam is about and what Muslims believe." A Companion to the Muslim World" comprises an attractive and coherent attempt by distinguished scholars to contibute towards that vital process of comprehension.