Leor Halevi's Modern Things on Trial presents a thought-provoking approach to the study of Islam and a rigorous survey of primary materials. The main thesis is neatly captured in the subtitle: Islam's Global and Material Reformation. Halevi rejects the notion that Islam lacks and therefore needs a Reformation, arguing that a Reformation has already taken place, and that it was primarily driven by material rather than intellectual forces. This applies a material turn seen in some scholarship on religion to the pivotal era of globalization, signposted by the lifetime of Muhammad Rashid Rida (1865–1935). Rida is commonly referenced as a Syrian Islamic modernist who continued the reformist efforts of Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (d. 1897) and Muhammad ʿAbduh (d. 1905). He advocated modernist reform is his famous journal, Al-Manar, which he published from 1898 to his death in 1935. The journal was read throughout much of the Muslim world, from Morocco to Indonesia. A complete collection of its volumes runs to approximately thirty thousand pages. Additionally, he Rida has been seen, particularly in his later years, as an Islamic fundamentalist, even as fundamentalism's “Godfather.” Halevi, as some others have also suggested, notes that neither “modernist” nor “fundamentalist” corresponds in any serious manner to the way that Rida identified himself. He concisely yet forcefully challenges a “standard narrative” on Rida (introduction; Chapter 8). According to this narrative, at some point—perhaps following ʿAbduh's death, perhaps following World War I, perhaps following his great disappointment with the League of Nations, perhaps encapsulated by his support of Ibn Saud's nascent state—Rida shifted from modernism to fundamentalism. Along with finding that in connection to Rida neither term is particularly helpful to begin with, and while acknowledging some shifts, Halevi finds more consistency in his positions than many have allowed: “a high level of continuity in…religious and legal doctrines” (p. 21). This is seen, for instance, in Rida's forward-looking stance on trade. A corollary is that some scholars overstate Rida's influence over so-called fundamentalism or latter-day Salafism, as distinct from ʿAbduh's earlier form of Salafism (pp. 336–337n8).

Halevi argues for the Reformation of Islam as bottom-up rather than top-down. In Halevi's view, and contrary to those who see Rida as reform's orchestrator, he emerges as an authoritative and effective voice, a mufti who responded to, framed, and generally endorsed reform (pp. 259–61). This places Rida and others like him at the end of the transformative process being described. That process begins with the strange “modern things” of the book's title, things which some Muslims came to put “on trial” (although Halevi also notes that many objects and technologies passed into the Muslim world without generating controversy). These modern things include toothbrushes and toilet paper, banknotes and gramophone records, telegraphs and law codes, and many other objects and technologies. Their use affected religious norms and practices. Aware of this, some adopters, criticized by those less open to change, sought authoritative reassurance in the form of a fatwa. As fatwa seekers (mustaftīs), they sought an opinion that would deem their choices Islamically sound. Was it, for instance, acceptable to listen to Qurʾan recitations on a gramophone? Were Islamic rules of purity regarding a Qurʾanic muṣḥaf being violated if non-Muslims were trading records of Qurʾan recitations? Was the use of toilet paper ritually dangerous, or potentially so?

Here, if an object or technology is the initial producer of change, the second step is taken by the fatwa seeker. Rida's role as a mufti, who would mainly respond affirmatively—yes, recordings of Qurʾan recitations are permissible and even preferable to a live recitation in a non-Arab accent (pp. 140; 156–158); toilet paper is permissible—is the third step in the process. Halevi finds that understanding is served best when fatwas are seen as effects rather than causes (p. 28), as the end of the process. After all, affirmative fatwas generally endorsed what had become current practice by the time they were delivered. Further, Halevi emphasizes that we usually do not know the effect of a fatwa (pp. 28–28; 32), so that the discourse was effectively driven by mustaftīs more than by muftis (pp. 61–62). This thesis sheds helpful light on the process of fatwa-seeking and delivery more generally, and paints a different picture than that found in many Western works “which have placed famous muftis on high pedestals, towering over the crowds of nameless, passive followers” (p. 276 n60). Halevi suggests that Western interpreters may have been overly influenced by muftis’ own self-aggrandizing discussions, also pointing out that mustaftīs could socially outrank muftis (p. 62).

In Rida's case, Halevi draws attention to the financial aspects of his endeavor. Although Rida described the nature of his journal in different terms (see his Introduction to al-Manar, Volume 28), he published the first commercially successful Islamic journal in the Muslim world. Halevi sees Rida as a businessman whose livelihood and religious pursuits were related (“The Business of Al-Manar,” Chapter 2). The constituency of those seeking his fatwas overlapped with that of his subscribers—Halevi even suggests that Rida may have found fatwas on controversial topics good for sales (p. 283n15). And petitions would often make fairly clear what kind of an answer was being sought, as in the case of a modernizing (jadīdī) mustaftī from Kazan, Russia, asking Rida's advice on recorded Qurʾan recitations that traditionalists (qadīmīs) disapproved of (Chapter 5). As noted, Rida endorsed recorded recitations. In general, Halevi sees Rida giving his subscribing petitioners “exactly what they paid for: a predictably accommodating ruling that justified, with multiple references to scripture, their position” (p. 260). Again reflecting his point that a fatwa is an effect, Halevi finds it is unlikely that receipt of Rida's fatwas would have resolved disputes.

The largely affirmative stance is in keeping with Rida's approach to Islam: “Laissez-Faire Salafism.” This reflects Rida's notion of yusr al-Islām, namely that Islam is a religion of ease, facilitating the path to prosperity—and, hopefully, sovereign independence—by minimizing unnecessary obstacles. Halevi sees in this a form of “prosperity gospel.” To that end Islamic law serves for Rida, as for other jurists of a pragmatic persuasion—pragmatism here seen as integral to Muslim jurisprudence rather than a borrowing from the West—as a malleable “quintessence” rather than a “constant” (p. 15). Here Halevi critiques the views of scholars such as Bernard Lewis who argued that Muslims resisted Western products because Islamic tradition rejects innovation as heresy (p. 14). Halevi rejects this thesis by showing how Muslims such as Rida's petitioners and Rida himself adopted or accommodated all manner of modern objects, technologies, and practices. In Chapter 6, we see Rida, an ʿālim, responding affirmatively, pragmatically, and even enthusiastically to a question on whether Muslims could judge according to “English codes” (qawānīn) in India (pp. 159–60; 184–86). When it comes to objects—“Euro-Muslim” rather than “Western” (pp. 15–16)—we see that their Islamic acceptability usually had little to do with geographical provenance. Clothing was one category that was referred to in terms of its foreign origins. Rida's attitude here was ambivalent and inconsistent, but at times further illustrative of his pragmatism, intent, and purpose rather than origin or cultural form being at issue. Thus, he favored Western forms where they served a function that Muslims could harness, as with military uniforms. But Rida criticized practices that to his understanding served no significant purpose, such as Muslims adopting fashions in pointless imitation of the French. Similarly, he opposed European forms of dress motivated by Ataturk's secularism, which he saw as a campaign to remove all adherence to Islam from the Turkish nation (Chapter 7).

Altogether, what emerges is a vibrant picture of multiple Muslim “entanglements” with goods and technologies that originated in the West and that led to changes, debates, and fatwas. Given its reach and longevity (1898–1935), Rida's journal proves an excellent source for examining these entanglements, which ranged from the Middle East to Singapore, Brazil, and Ohio (p. 58). This revises the notion of a clash between a progressing West and a static Muslim East bent on preserving an idealized purity, and where Western products act as initial agents of cultural change. The products and technologies Halevi discusses could inform Westernization, but they could also be lent to making Muslim practice more Islamic.

This is an original and very substantial work of scholarship. Whether or not readers find its arguments persuasive, those who engage Halevi's terrain in future would certainly do well to reckon with them. The writing is clear, engaging, and accessible. In addition to classes on Islam, the arguments advanced here may be pertinent to courses on theory in religious studies.