Matthew J. Kuiper (Ph.D., University of Notre Dame) is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Missouri State University. His research and teaching interests include classical and modern Islam, inter-religious relations, and the history of the Indian subcontinent.
Matthew Kuiper's Da'wa and Other Religions is a groundbreaking study of how Islamic apologetics has developed from its origin through the contemporary period. Kuiper illustrates the scriptural origins for da'wa and also analyzes recent movements in South Asia - including that of the Tablighi Jama'at and Zakir Naik. His work, which is a model of rigorous scholarship, makes connections with Christian missions but also emphasizes all that is distinctive in Islamic da'wa. Gabriel Said Reynolds, University of Notre Dame Matthew Kuiper's [book], concentrates on Islamic da'wa with special reference to the Tabligh Jama'at and Zakir Naik as case studies [...] It discusses critically and informatively how these two cases that started out locally and, with the passage of time, developed into international actors. Kuiper's very readable and smooth flowing [book] deals with the theme of da'wa in a balanced manner. Muhammad Haron, University of Johannesburg, South Africa [The book is] a detailed examination of the history of the concept of da'wa, or mission, in the history of Islamic thought and an analysis of two modern Indian movements, which have been actively involved in da'wa in the modern period. [...] The work is a model of rigorous scholarship. Kuiper focuses on the Tablighi Jama'at (chapters 4 and 5) and the Islamic Research Foundation (chapters 6 and 7) and illustrates how these movements develop out of the globalization of da'wa. Kuiper argues convincingly that [these movements] point to the rise of da'wa as an important form of Islamic activism generally, and to the particular place of India in producing distinctive forms of this activism. Anonymous reviewer