The Handy Islam Answer Book. John Renard
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Winston Churchill once described Soviet Russia as “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” Many “Westerners” these days might be inclined to consider Churchill’s comment equally applicable to the global religious tradition of Islam. For some, sadly, the characterization does not go nearly far enough—mere “inscrutability” hardly accounts for the threat of “evil” with which they associate Islam and Muslims. When Sir Winston added hopefully, “But perhaps there is a key,” he had in mind a way of countering Stalin’s geo-political designs.
Is there also a “key” for people who find Islam impossibly opaque, or perhaps simply intolerable? Actually, there are two: one too-seldom provided, the other too-often overlooked. The first is the need for reliable information about Islam and Muslims; the second has to do with the simple consideration of the shared humanity that joins Muslims and non-Muslims far more deeply than cultural or religious differences separate them. It is my hope that readers will find both in some measure in this volume’s twelve chapters. Let me begin by responding to several large, general background questions I have been asked often over the forty-five years or so since I began turning toward the academic study of Islam.
How and why did I get seriously interested in Islamic religious studies? As a result of teaching high school and college-level courses on comparative