The Problems with Islam, Vol.2: One Thousand Further Inquiries into Institutions, Everyday Life, Knowledge, Global Power, and the Work of Repair: The Anatomy of Belief, #4

Belief does not remain inside scripture. It enters institutions, families, workplaces, markets, classrooms, hospitals, media platforms - and systems of power.

In The Problems with Islam, Volume Two, Rayford Aquirre continues The Anatomy of Belief with one thousand further inquiries into what happens when religious ideas become part of everyday administration and human relationships.

Moving beyond the scriptural, theological, and legal questions examined in Volume One, this book turns toward the machinery of contemporary life: ministries of religious affairs, mosque governance, clerical authority, pilgrimage administration, employment, migrant labour, family dependency, childhood education, mental health, digital influence, heritage, halal certification, social pressure, institutional misconduct, safeguarding, whistleblowing, restitution, and reform.

The method is deliberately demanding. Islam is not treated as a single institution, Muslims are not treated as a collective defendant, and criticism is not permitted to rest on association alone. Instead, each inquiry asks what the evidence can actually establish, who possesses authority, who bears the consequences of error, what the strongest Muslim defence is, where comparison changes the diagnosis, and what observable evidence would demonstrate genuine reform.

Across one hundred chapters and one thousand individually locatable research questions, Volume Two follows belief into the systems through which trust is created, exercised, damaged, and sometimes rebuilt.

This is not simply a catalogue of accusations. It is an investigation into the conditions under which religious institutions deserve trust - and what accountability requires when trust fails.