Okay, the title about says it all, but I feel compelled to explain why I am asking.
Yesterday I as in my parent’s home and idly picked up a magazine that is put out by their national church organization(Same as I grew up in, do not belong to now).
There was an article titled “Some things you should know about Islam” I was a tad surprised, as I assumed it would be some sort of explanation that not all Muslims are terrorists, or why people need to be more welcoming to those of other religions. And since the denomination in question is very conservative and dogmatic, that would be a big change.
But as soon as I saw Islam referred to as “a religion bent on world domination” I knew it wasn’t going to be an article on Christian tolerance. It was more about alleged Islamic intolerance.
I suspect that there was a lot of erroneous information on Islamic beliefs. Now, I have read about Islam in world relgions classes, and in history books, but I have never used a study guide such as one would use for Biblical study. I’d like to be able to refute some of the statements that sounded so hateful and jingoistic, but at this point I can’t do it without a source to cite.
So, what is the best such book that any Doper could recommend? It will have to be English, I don’t read Arabic.
I think you have to approach this the right way. Islam is no more bent on world domination than Christianity or any other aggressively proselytizing religion is. Religion is something that humans interprete and those humans are, as always, the weak link in the chain.
I guffaw at people who try to find Bin Laden’s motives in the Koran. He was just as motivated by the Koran as the Crusaders were by the Bible. Only the sheep need scritpural justification, it’s up to the leaders to make it up the evidence. People do what they do, and then they find justification for it in their holy books, not the other way round. But that is a GD thread.
Depending on your knowledge already, a good beginning is the brief Islam: A Short History by Karen Armstrong. The same author also does a decent biography of the prophet Muhammad.
I think the OP wanted something in the context of the modern war on terror/clash of civilizations, and not a dispassionate scholarly study of the origins of Islam. As interesting as the Sunni/Shi’ite schim and the Abbassid and Ummayad Caliphates are, I’m not sure if they are really relevent to the OP’s purpose.
Karen Armstrong’s book would be an excellent place to begin to address the question in the OP. There are a lot of commentators who learn a couple factoids and then spout off about “Islam” with no idea of what they’re talking about, and even some who just use it to build some paranoid fantasy. One could as easily make scare stories about Rushdoony’s Christian Dominionists and their evil schemes to dominate America, being after all closer to home and therefore more likely to affect our lives directly. No. Karen Armstrong’s book is really down to earth, honest, and above all factual. A cool mug of enlightenment and necessary background information, a prerequisite to studying Islam in the 21st century. Go for it.
The Heart of Islam by Seyyed Hossein Nasr is probably the best book of all that directly address the issue raised by the OP. This book is recommended reading of Rabbi Lerner’s Network of Spiritual Progressives who are meeting in Washington, DC next week. I have this book and the parts of it I read are really good and to the point. Dr. Nasr even endorses Islamic feminism, which for a conservative like him is remarkable. This book not only does not bash other religions, it builds spiritual bridges to them. Dr. Nasr is one of the most highly renowned scholars of contemporary Islam, so this view carries considerable weight among Muslims and students of Islam.
The web site of Professor Alan Godlas, who is an American convert to Islam and a practitioner of Sufism, is the best site I know of online for explanations of various areas of Islam. This site has as much as an encyclopedia, and Godlas is a scholar in the field of Islamic studies. http://www.arches.uga.edu/~godlas/home.html
Maybe, but one of Baker’s final sentences says something about a study guide similar to one used in conjunction with the Bible. So maybe she’s lookinig for a dispassionate analysis of the Koran. Something similar to the “higher criticism” approach undertaken by the Jesus Seminar in interpreting the statements and events of of the Bible.
If that’s the case, I’d recommend Ibn Warraq’s What the Koran Really Says. Warraq has authored a number of other books on Islam which may be of interest, too.
Thanks to everyone for their replies so far. I really appreciate them, and I tried to craft the OP so as not to start a debate, as that wasn’t what I am looking for.
What I need is a little from several of the responses. A little history to show the basis of belief, a guide to the Koran and how the suras are interpreted now, and something to refute that Islam is a naturally antagonistic faith.
I know what the five pillars are, but trying to say what Muslims believe from that is like taking the Nicene Creed and figuring out from that what else Christians do in practice.
What if statements in the Koran are in seeming contradiction with each other, the way some parts of the Bible are? What do Muslims say about that?
I hope I have sufficiently muddied the waters once more, and again, thanks to all for their replies.
In case anyone wonders, although I don’t belong now to the denomination I grew up in, I am a Christian, fairly devout, a Sunday School teacher even! I just don’t believe in taking an ugly tone, as did the article, when writing about the faith of others.
Excellent question, Baker. Irshad Manji writes about that in The Trouble with Islam Today, after citing some Qur’an verses that support women’s equality and other verses that deprecate it:
"The truth is, I knew which interpretation I wanted but I didn’t know for sure (and still don’t) which one God wanted. With so much contradiction at play, nobody knows. Those who wish to flog women on the flimsiest of charges can get the necessary backup from the Koran. So can those who don’t want girls to lead prayer. Then again, those who seek equality can find succor, too.
In trying to answer how I reconcile my Muslim faith with the barbaric lashing of a rape victim, I concluded that I couldn’t reconcile them with breezy confidence. I couldn’t glibly say, as I’ve heard so many Muslim feminists do, that the Koran itself guarantees justice. I couldn’t cavalierly shrug that those whacko Nigerian jurists who apply Sharia law have sodomized my transparently egalitarian religion. The Koran is not transparently egalitarian for women. It’s not transparently anything except enigmatic."
(p. 35-36)
Your parents and you might enjoy this online quiz in which you are given several statements and have to guess whether they were uttered by Osama bin Ladin or by Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell. It’s not at all easy.
That is an interesting quiz, bluethree. I got 15 out of 20, but most of the time I was guessing on style and tone rather than on expressed ideology. On the other hand, isolated quotes are probably easier to tweak for ambiguity than, say, entire paragraphs.
I just don’t believe in taking an ugly tone, as did the article, when writing about the faith of others.