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Redefining the Muslim Community: Ethnicity, Religion and Politics in the Thought of Alfarabi. By Orwin Alexander. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017. 264p. $59.95 cloth.

The purpose of this book is to examine the medieval Muslim philosopher Alfarabi’s (ad 870–950) conception of the Umma, which he understood as the particular ethnic as well as the broader religious (Islamic) community. The central argument of the book is that contra contemporary claims that the Muslim community is a homogenous entity that should be ruled by a single political authority, one of the earliest and most notable Islamic philosophers thought otherwise. Through a careful and lively examination of Alfarabi’s various writings, Alexander Orwin shows that the philosopher acknowledged and affirmed the continued existence of specific national communities (what Orwin refers to as ethnic or civilizational Ummas) under the aegis of the broader Islamic Umma.

While Alfarabi advocates virtuous rule based on philosophy and true religion, Orwin illustrates that he recognizes that neither the universality of the Islamic message nor of philosophy could quell the diversity of languages, customs, literatures, and arts of the communities comprising the multinational Islamic Umma. Ultimately and most importantly, Orwin shows that Alfarabi can be compellingly read as suggesting that Islamic rule ought to accommodate and adapt itself to the particularities of the ethnic Ummas comprising its broader political community. He reads into the nuances of Alfarabi’s works to offer a few directives to this end, including the use of visual arts and poetry to “establish effective and unique ways of instilling the opinions of the religion in every ethnic Umma” (p. 129), and the continuous exercise of prudence on a case-by-case, or umma-by-umma, basis.

The significance of this project is twofold. First, it enriches the extant literature on Alfarabi’s political thought, and through him, the study of medieval Islamic political thought more generally. It does this by offering the first sustained examination...

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