About us

Aims and Objectives

The Islamic Literary Society was founded on the conviction that Islam is not merely a set of rituals to be performed, but a vast and living civilisation: one that has produced, over fourteen centuries, some of the most profound literature, philosophy, poetry, historiography, and scientific thought the world has known. Our aims and objectives flow from this conviction, and from a concern that this inheritance is at risk of being forgotten by the very communities to whom it belongs.

1. To Cultivate a Culture of Serious Reading

We believe that reading (patient, attentive, and reflective reading) is itself a spiritual and intellectual discipline. In an age of fragmented attention and algorithmic distraction, the act of sitting with a book is increasingly rare, and its loss carries a heavy cost. Our objective is to foster an intimate and enduring relationship between the Muslim reader and the book, whether that book be a classical Arabic biography, a contemporary novel from the Muslim diaspora, or a work of history, theology, or poetry. Reading is how we inherit; without it, transmission breaks.

2. To Preserve and Transmit the Literary Heritage of Islam

Our foremost aim is to preserve the classical and contemporary literary heritage of the Muslim world, and to make it accessible to a new generation of readers. The Islamic tradition has always been a tradition of the book; a tradition of writing, reading, commentary, and debate. From the great libraries of Baghdad, Cordoba, Cairo, Timbuktu, and Sonargaon, to the manuscript traditions of West Africa, the Ottoman lands, the Indian subcontinent, and the Malay world, Muslims cultivated a civilisation whose life-blood was the written and spoken word. We seek to reintroduce this heritage to readers who have inherited it, but who may no longer recognise it as their own.

3. To Move Beyond a Purely Ritual Understanding of Islam

A great concern of our time is that Islam is increasingly reduced, in the minds of many Muslims themselves, to a checklist of ritual observances. The rituals are, of course, the backbone of the faith and are not to be minimised; yet Islam has always been more than this. It has been a civilisation with its own aesthetic sensibilities, its own architecture, its own culinary traditions, its own scholarly etiquettes, its own ways of grieving and celebrating, its own manners of hospitality and friendship. If a generation grows up knowing only the rituals, and not the wider culture that framed and enriched them, it will inherit a hollowed-out faith: one that struggles to answer the deeper questions of meaning, beauty, and belonging. Our aim is to help readers recover the fullness of the tradition.

4. To Occupy the Cultural Space

Culture is never neutral, and a space left vacant does not remain vacant for long. Where Muslims withdraw from the cultural and literary sphere, other narratives rush in to fill the void; narratives shaped by colonial and neo-colonial assumptions about who Muslims are, what they have contributed, and what they are permitted to aspire to. The colonial project did not end with political independence. It continues in subtler forms: in the ways histories are written, canons are formed, syllabi are curated, and imaginations are trained. Our objective is to occupy this cultural space with confidence and care; not through polemic, but through the quiet and cumulative work of publishing, reviewing, translating, and discussing. A community that produces and reads its own literature is a community that cannot easily be written out of history.

5. To Serve Muslims in the West and the Wider Diaspora

The Society is particularly conscious of the situation of Muslims living in the West, and in diasporic communities across the world. Here, questions of identity, belonging, and inheritance take on a special urgency. A young Muslim raised in London, Toronto, or Berlin must navigate multiple worlds at once, and literature is among the most powerful means through which such navigation becomes possible. Through works of history, memoir, fiction, and scholarship, the diaspora reader can find both anchors and horizons: a sense of where they come from, and a sense of what they might yet become. We aim to support this navigation by curating, reviewing, and producing literature that speaks to these complexities without reducing them.

6. To Build a Community of Readers, Writers, and Thinkers

Finally, we aim to build and sustain a community; a society, in the truest sense, of readers, writers, translators, reviewers, and thinkers who share a commitment to the life of the mind within an Islamic framework. Through our book reviews, publications, podcasts, reading circles, and events, we hope to create the conditions in which serious literary engagement can flourish, and in which new voices can find both an audience and a home.

In pursuing these aims, the Islamic Literary Society does not see itself as a nostalgic project. We are not merely looking backward. We are attempting something at once more difficult and more hopeful: to carry a living tradition forward, honestly and imaginatively, into a future that will demand much of it, and much of us.