Part 1: Quranic and Historical Foundations1

Chapter 1: Contention in the Quran and the Sunnah

The book opens on the battlefield: a small band of believers under Talut facing Goliath and his army; a modest Greek fleet drawing Xerxes into the strait at Salamis; a poor people in the jungle outlasting the most formidable war machine of the twentieth century, until the war reached the heart of America itself. From these scenes the chapter turns to the text: what “repelling” means in the verses of Al-Baqarah and Al-Hajj, why the order in which the root d-f-ʿ was revealed suggests a deliberate, graduated education, and how the life of the Prophet can be read as a school of divine laws. It closes on the question every later chapter takes up: why does contention exist at all?

The book is being prepared for publication, in Arabic. These pages offer glimpses of it, not its text.

Cases in this chapter

• 1

  Talut and Goliath

  A believing few against an overbearing many

  Chapter 1The battlefield
• 2

  The Battle of Salamis

  The Greek few against Persian might

  480 BCEChapter 1The battlefield
• 3

  Vietnam

  When the jungle defeats an empire

  1965–1975Chapter 1Liberation from occupation

The Cases