Skip to content
FR

Fazlur Rahman

فضل الرحمٰن ملک

1919–1988 · British India / Pakistan; United States · Philosopher, Qur'anic scholar, historian of Islamic thought, reformer

Fazlur Rahman Malik was born in 1919 in the Hazara district of the North-West Frontier Province, the son of a religious scholar who taught him the traditional Islamic disciplines at home. He studied Arabic at Punjab University in Lahore and then went to Oxford, where he wrote a doctoral thesis on Ibn Sina’s psychology, published in 1952 as Avicenna’s Psychology. He taught Persian and Islamic philosophy at Durham University and later Islamic studies at McGill University in Montreal.

In the early 1960s he returned to Pakistan at the invitation of Ayub Khan’s government to direct the Central Institute of Islamic Research in Karachi, a body meant to advise on bringing law and policy into line with Islam. His published views on interest, family law, hadith and the nature of revelation provoked fierce opposition from religious parties, and in 1968 he resigned and left the country. From 1969 until his death he taught at the University of Chicago, where he held the Harold H. Swift Distinguished Service Professorship of Islamic Thought.

Rahman argued that Muslims must recover the moral purpose of the Qur’an by reading it historically: first understanding its verses against the circumstances of seventh-century Arabia, then extracting their general ethical principles, and finally applying those principles to present conditions. This “double movement” informed Islamic Methodology in History, Islam, Major Themes of the Qur’an and Islam and Modernity, in which he also criticised both the rigidity of traditional scholarship and the superficiality of much Islamic modernism. His philosophical work included studies of prophecy and of Mulla Sadra.

He died in Chicago in 1988. Through his writings, widely translated in Turkey and Indonesia, and through doctoral students who returned to teach across the Muslim world, he became one of the most influential figures in modern reformist approaches to the Qur’an and Islamic law.

Archived 14 October 2026 · Biography sources: en.wikipedia.org · ajis.org

Works

Books 9

BOOK 1952 · English
Avicenna's Psychology

An annotated English translation of the psychology section of Ibn Sina's Kitab al-Najat, based on his Oxford doctoral work.

Archived 14 October 2026 · Source: cambridge.org

Cite

Rahman, Fazlur. Avicenna's Psychology. 1952. Archived 14 October 2026 in Islamic Internet Archives: Archive of Modern Islamic Thought. https://islamicarchives.org/authors/fazlur-rahman/#fazlur-rahman-avicennas-psychology

No free copy online
BOOK 1958 · English
Prophecy in Islam: Philosophy and Orthodoxy

A study of how the Muslim philosophers explained prophecy and revelation and how orthodox theologians responded to their theories.

Archived 14 October 2026 · Source: archive.org

Cite

Rahman, Fazlur. Prophecy in Islam: Philosophy and Orthodoxy. 1958. Archived 14 October 2026 in Islamic Internet Archives: Archive of Modern Islamic Thought. https://islamicarchives.org/authors/fazlur-rahman/#fazlur-rahman-prophecy-in-islam-philosophy-and-orthodoxy

No free copy online
BOOK 1965 · English
Islamic Methodology in History

Essays on the historical development of sunna, hadith, ijtihad and consensus, distinguishing the Prophet's living example from its later formalisation in hadith literature.

Archived 14 October 2026 · Source: Internet Archive (borrowable)

Cite

Rahman, Fazlur. Islamic Methodology in History. 1965. Internet Archive (borrowable), https://archive.org/details/islamicmethodolo0000fazl. Archived 14 October 2026 in Islamic Internet Archives: Archive of Modern Islamic Thought. https://islamicarchives.org/authors/fazlur-rahman/#fazlur-rahman-islamic-methodology-in-history

BOOK 1966 · English
Islam

A historical survey of Islam's religious development, from the Qur'an and the Prophet through law, theology, Sufism and philosophy to modern reform movements.

Archived 14 October 2026 · Source: Internet Archive (2nd edition, 1979, borrowable)

Cite

Rahman, Fazlur. Islam. 1966. Internet Archive (2nd edition, 1979, borrowable), https://archive.org/details/islam2ndseconded0000fazl. Archived 14 October 2026 in Islamic Internet Archives: Archive of Modern Islamic Thought. https://islamicarchives.org/authors/fazlur-rahman/#fazlur-rahman-islam

BOOK 1975 · English
The Philosophy of Mulla Sadra

A systematic exposition of the metaphysics of the Safavid philosopher Mulla Sadra, especially his doctrines of existence and substantial motion.

Archived 14 October 2026 · Source: catalogue.bnf.fr

Cite

Rahman, Fazlur. The Philosophy of Mulla Sadra. 1975. Archived 14 October 2026 in Islamic Internet Archives: Archive of Modern Islamic Thought. https://islamicarchives.org/authors/fazlur-rahman/#fazlur-rahman-the-philosophy-of-mulla-sadra

No free copy online
BOOK 1980 · English
Major Themes of the Qur'an

A thematic synthesis of the Qur'an's teaching on God, the individual, society, nature, prophethood, eschatology and Satan, read as a coherent moral worldview.

Archived 14 October 2026 · Source: press.uchicago.edu

Cite

Rahman, Fazlur. Major Themes of the Qur'an. 1980. Archived 14 October 2026 in Islamic Internet Archives: Archive of Modern Islamic Thought. https://islamicarchives.org/authors/fazlur-rahman/#fazlur-rahman-major-themes-of-the-quran

No free copy online
BOOK 1982 · English
Islam and Modernity: Transformation of an Intellectual Tradition

A history of Islamic education and intellectual life with a programme for reform, including his 'double movement' method for interpreting the Qur'an.

Archived 14 October 2026 · Source: press.uchicago.edu

Cite

Rahman, Fazlur. Islam and Modernity: Transformation of an Intellectual Tradition. 1982. Archived 14 October 2026 in Islamic Internet Archives: Archive of Modern Islamic Thought. https://islamicarchives.org/authors/fazlur-rahman/#fazlur-rahman-islam-and-modernity-transformation-of-an-intellectual-tradition

No free copy online
BOOK 1987 · English
Health and Medicine in the Islamic Tradition

A study of how Islamic religious values and the Galenic medical tradition shaped ideas of health, illness and medical ethics in Muslim societies.

Archived 14 October 2026 · Source: Internet Archive (borrowable)

Cite

Rahman, Fazlur. Health and Medicine in the Islamic Tradition. 1987. Internet Archive (borrowable), https://archive.org/details/healthmedicinein0000rahm. Archived 14 October 2026 in Islamic Internet Archives: Archive of Modern Islamic Thought. https://islamicarchives.org/authors/fazlur-rahman/#fazlur-rahman-health-and-medicine-in-the-islamic-tradition

BOOK 2000 · English
Revival and Reform in Islam: A Study of Islamic Fundamentalism

An unfinished study, edited after his death by Ebrahim Moosa, of revivalist and reform movements in pre-modern Islam and their bearing on modern fundamentalism.

Archived 14 October 2026 · Source: catalogue.bnf.fr

Cite

Rahman, Fazlur. Revival and Reform in Islam: A Study of Islamic Fundamentalism. 2000. Archived 14 October 2026 in Islamic Internet Archives: Archive of Modern Islamic Thought. https://islamicarchives.org/authors/fazlur-rahman/#fazlur-rahman-revival-and-reform-in-islam-a-study-of

No free copy online

Papers 2

PAPER 1964 · English
Riba and Interest

An article in the journal Islamic Studies arguing that the Qur'anic prohibition of riba targeted exploitative compound usury rather than all modern bank interest.

Archived 14 October 2026 · Source: Internet Archive

Cite

Rahman, Fazlur. Riba and Interest. 1964. Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/ribaandinterest. Archived 14 October 2026 in Islamic Internet Archives: Archive of Modern Islamic Thought. https://islamicarchives.org/authors/fazlur-rahman/#fazlur-rahman-riba-and-interest

PAPER 1970 · English
Islamic Modernism: Its Scope, Method and Alternatives

An assessment of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Islamic modernism that criticises its piecemeal method and calls for a systematic hermeneutic of the Qur'an.

Archived 14 October 2026 · Source: cambridge.org

Cite

Rahman, Fazlur. Islamic Modernism: Its Scope, Method and Alternatives. 1970. Archived 14 October 2026 in Islamic Internet Archives: Archive of Modern Islamic Thought. https://islamicarchives.org/authors/fazlur-rahman/#fazlur-rahman-islamic-modernism-its-scope-method-and-alternatives

No free copy online