This is not an Introduction to Islam, nor is it a textbook. There are many excellent introductions and textbooks in the marketplace already. One notes in particular David Waines, An Introduction to Islam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), Gerhard Endress, An Introduction to Islam (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1988), Sachiko Murata and William C. Chittick, The Vision of Islam: The Foundations of Muslim Faith and Practice (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 1996) and John L. Esposito (ed.), Oxford History of Islam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). All of these, in their diverse and very attractive ways, play a significant and important role in introducing student and scholar alike to one of the world's major religions.

This book is a research monograph which aims to do much more than that. It operates generally within the sphere of comparative religion and is, specifically, a comparative exploration of the role of tradition/Tradition within two distinct faiths, Islam and Christianity. Specific leitmotivs include the roles of authority, fundamentalism, the use of reason, ijtihād, and original comparisons between Islamic Salafism and Christian Lefebvrism. ‘Salafism’ refers to that strain in Islam which looks backwards to the thought, practices and traditions of the Salaf (pious ancestors); ‘Lefebvrism’ is a reference to the traditionalist thought and practices of the schismatic Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre (1905–91) who rejected much of the teaching of the Second Vatican Council (1962–65) and what he perceived as that Council's overthrow of tradition/Tradition.