BOOK REVIEW: WHAT IS ISLAM: ON THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING ISLAMIC , by Shahab Ahmed, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS,2016. Is violence by ISIS and similar jihadi-salafist groups Islamic? Is wife -beating Islamic? Is the killing of homosexuals Islamic? Is subjugation of non-Muslims Islamic? Is the resistance to abolition of slavery Islamic ? (the list can go on). These and similar kinds of questions (and accompanying ethical aporias) confront Muslims perhaps more than ever before and have elicited different and at times symmetrically opposite responses. For the proponents of the Islamic State and their intellectual sympathizers across the world the answer to these questions is a clear ‘yes’. For many other Muslims it is a clear ‘no’(although many would struggle to justify this view hermeneutically). How is this possible? Of course, what is or isn’t Islamic depends to a significant extent upon how Muslims have been not only defining but also conceptualizing the concept of Islam itself.