An Apologetic for Islam - Readable but Problematic

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	• Islam: A Short History (Modern Library Chronicles) Karen Armstrong Modern Library, 2002 - 272 pages average customer review:based on 139 reviews view larger image
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ISLAM: Peaceful Ideas versus Violent History

Karen Armstrong is frequently referred to as a fair and objective author of several books about different religions. A newly converted Muslim recommended her book on Islam to me. I believe Armstrong's short book illustrates the dramatic contrast between some of Islam's peaceful ideas and Islam's violent history. I admire many of the peaceful ideas, but I am amazed that anyone can refer to Islam as a peaceful religion, if they've read about Islam's violent history. The following are extracts from Armstrong's book, Islam: A Short History.

PEACEFUL ideas:
· Muhammad's message was simple. Muhammad did not think that he was founding a new religion, but that he was merely bringing the old faith in the One God to the Arabs, who had never had a prophet before.
· The new sect would eventually be called Islam (surrender); a Muslim was a man or a woman who had made this submission of their entire being to Allah and his demand that human beings behave to one another with justice, equity and compassion.
· Social justice was, therefore, the crucial virtue of Islam. Muslims were commanded as their first duty to build a community (ummah) characterized by practical compassion, in which there was a fair distribution of wealth. This was far more important than any doctrinal teaching about God.
· The Quran gave women rights of inheritance and divorce centuries before Western women were accorded such status.

VIOLENT history:
· Muhammad and the emigrants from Mecca had no means of earning a living in Medina, so the emigrants resorted to the ghazu, the 'raid'. The emigrants began to conduct ghazu against the rich Meccan caravans, which brought them an income. The people of Mecca objected to the Muslims raiding their caravans and tried to stop them. The Muslims marched on Mecca with a large force and took over the city. It appears the Muslims "enabled the Arabs to live together in harmony" by using force to conquer them and using force to make them live peacefully.
· Under Umar's (the second leader after Muhammad's death) leadership, the Arabs burst into Iraq, Syria and Egypt, achieving a series of astonishing victories. Islam may be called a religion of peace, but Muslims clearly weren't a peaceful people during the century after the Muhammad's death. The first 20 pages of Armstrong's book are a chronology of Muslim history from 610 to 1998 which includes information about Muslim massacres of enemies, Muslim wars against other Arab tribes, and Muslim invasions of Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Jerusalem, Cyprus, North Africa, Spain, etc. In addition to their wars against others, some Muslim leaders assassinated other Muslim leaders.
· When the Arabs burst out of Arabia they were not impelled by the power of Islam. There was nothing religious about these campaigns. They wanted plunder and a common activity that would preserve the unity of the ummah.

EXAMPLE of a modern Muslim sect with some violent members:
· WAHHABISM. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, founded in 1932, was based on the Wahhabi ideal. Women are shrouded from view and secluded (even though this had not been the case in the Prophet's time), and traditional punishments, such as the mutilation of thieves, are enshrined in the legal system. The US press reported that the majority of the 9/11 terrorists were Wahhabists. Wahhabism is defined as "a puritan religion based on a strictly literal interpretation of scripture and early Islamic tradition"

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Now I understand

Outstanding book! I thought I was a pretty bright guy, but I found out how little I really new about Islam and found out how much of what I thought I knew about Islam was garbage. I may not agree with what they say or do, but at least now I understand why they do and can understand the reasons.

I think that anyone who thinks that they have an opinion about the Middle East should read this book.

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An Apologetic for Islam - Readable but Problematic

Karen Armstrong, noted scholar and ex-nun, writes a book riddle with errors and paradoxically also very accurate at times in detailing Islam in a readable yet short book. Her approach is mostly a chronological one, starting with Muhammad then moves well into the twentieth century. The particular version I have also has a short epilogue about Sept 11. While I think this book is mostly a propaganda piece to make Islam more palpable to Americans, Armstrong to often broad-brushes many dicey subjects regarding Islam's past and "spins" history like a political aid; however, considering that since Sept 11 there has been an overly polemic accounts of Islam as well, I think this counter-balance may be worth while - assuming people will read an assorted amount of material on this subject.

Armstrong is correct in most of the chronology of her text. She faithfully tells dates and in some instances portrays many in the Islamic faith as faithful, spiritually driven people. She also, in her epilogue, faithfully reminds Westerners that the men of Sept 11, were not, by the Quran's standards, good Muslims. Proper Muslims do not go to bars and drink alcoholic beverages.

She fails in other areas drastically. This is a problem for me because Armstrong is a noted scholar and surely knows that she is quite often using loaded language when speaking against another faith or empire, but softer language when speaking about Muslim atrocities. Examples abound like on page 15 where she downplays Muhammad's polygamy. She later says that Muslim's militaristic expansion was not "impelled by the power of `Islam' (and that it was done for) pragmatic" reasons. This is not entirely true. After all, Muhammad, it can be easily argued, sought to spread Islam by the sword when it was not accepted peaceably and his actions became a model for others. He was a strong warrior and a fierce assassin, something she largely avoids discussing.

She is also, I assert incorrect in discussing early Islamic rule. If this is the only book on Islam one read, they would think Muslims treated all their non-Muslim citizens equally. This is not true. While most Islamic states were not as egregious as opponents might state, they did make Christians and Jews second class citizens.

Lastly, she partially misdiagnoses Islamic fundamentalisms in the last century. I posit that the raise of Islamo-Fundamentalism is not so much from the 70's and 80's as a response to modernity, which there is some of that involved here, but more in response to the loss of the Ottoman Empire by the West after WW I. The Ottoman Empire aligned itself with the wrong Western country, and paid heavily for it. Modernity is only a part of the root of the problem, her analysis is too simple.

A readable book, though too PC to be reliable. I recommend one read this book with Trefkovic's "The Sword of the Prophet", an opposite view of Islam; somewhere between the two, one will get a more accurate picture of Islam.

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Useful primer on Islam

Christians become rightly perturbed when their religion is represented through the prism of the Spanish Iniquisition, the age of daily witch-burnings, the slaughter of Catholics by early Protestants, the slaughter of Protestants by Catholics, the slaughter of Native Americans by Protestants and Catholics, or, to give a more recent example, the Bosnian massacres. Christians rightly protest that their faith is best understood through their noble efforts towards peace and compassion.

Karen Armstrong, ever mindful of the injunction to do unto others as one would have them do unto you, treats the Islamic faith just as Christians would like to have their faith regarded. In this spirit of even-handedness, she compacts a great deal of information into this small book, but leaves the essential historical outline clear. This book is merely an introduction, but it is a fine one.

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