I’m convinced that one of the most important ways we learn about those who are different than us is by learning from those who are different than us. It is good for Christians to read books about Islam written by Muslims. It is good for Muslims to read books about Christianity by Christians. We shouldn’t be afraid of learning from those with whom we disagree. We should embrace it.
Book lover, Haroon Moghul, suggests some books on Islam that he thinks would be helpful in giving non-Muslims a better picture of Islam. Here are some of the books he listed.
- Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War and the Roots of Terrorism by Mahmood Mamdani
- The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization by Richard Bulliett
- Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think by John Esposito
- Mecca and Main Street: Muslim Life in America After 9/11 by Geneive Abdo
- How Does It Feel to be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America by Mustafa Bayoumi
- The Story of the Qur’an: Its History and Place in Muslim Life by Ingrid Mattson
- Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time by Karen Armstrong
- No God but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam by Reza Aslan
Those are excellent picks. Bulliet and Mamdani are particularly valuable as IMO desperately needed antidotes to a lot of the lazy and/or myopic post-9/11 conventional wisdom about Islam. (After reading Bulliet, for example, you realize how problematic and simplistic Bernard Lewis’ widely hailed and cited WHAT WENT WRONG was.)
A few others that I’d recommend off the top of my head are:
* David Waines. An Introduction to Islam. (Somewhat academic, but well written, systematic and engaging. An excellent reference for a student of Islam.)
* Ziauddin Sardar. Introducing Islam. (An irreverent intro in comic form.)
* Rumi (tr. William Chittick). The Sufi Path of Love. (Once you read this, you’ll realize how absurd all the “Divine love is alien to Islam” stuff is.)
* John Esposito. Islam: The Straight Path. (Still a valuable introduction to Islamic movements.)
* John Kelsey. Arguing the Just War in Islam. (Explores jihad etc. with an awareness of parallels in other religious traditions.)
* Khaled Abou El Fadl. The Great Theft. (Discusses the intellectual impact of Wahhabism and petrodollars on contemporary Islamic societies.)