As a scholar, Shaykh Al-Amin Mazrui attempted to be a bridge between Islam and modernity. He argued that while Christianity became the vanguard of progress when it became more secular and less Christian, Islam was the vanguard of progress when it more Islamic and less secular.

According to Shaykh al-Amin, progress among Muslims required not the abandonment of Islam but the recovery of the original spirit of Islamic enlightenment. Shaykh al-Amin choice of these favored sayings of the Prophet (saw) in The Content of Character translated and introduced here by the well known American scholar.