Dr. Nazir Khan’s timely book, The Straight Path, advances a bold and insightful thesis: the solutions to the crises confronting Muslims—and indeed the wider world—are not to be found in obscure theories or future innovations, but within the Divine Scripture that many Muslims recite daily, often without deep reflection. The existential threats to our material and spiritual well-being, rooted in ideological deviation, can be dismantled gradually and systematically through the same short chapter of the Qur’an that children learn in their earliest years and that practicing Muslims recite at least seventeen times each day—Sūrah al-Fātiḥah.

Taking this proposition seriously, a similar analysis may be applied to the phrase with which every recitation of the Qur’an begins: Aʿūdhu bi-llāhi min al-shayṭāni al-rajīm (“I seek refuge in Allah from Satan, the expelled”), commonly referred to as the istiʿādhah (seeking refuge). The foundation of this practice lies in the divine command: “So when you recite the Qur’an, seek refuge in Allah from Satan, the expelled” (Qur’an 16:98).