Why I Am a Muslim

[rootedinsong.livejournal.com]

15. Why I Am a Muslim, by Asma Gull Hasan

There was very little I liked about this book. Although it's directed towards adults, it is written in a very simplistic, repetitious style, as if the intended audience were twelve-year-olds. I read it because I do not know much about Islam and wanted to learn more, but it didn't teach me very much of interest.

The author is very focused on convincing her readers (who are assumed to be non-Muslims who have very little accurate information about Islam) that Islam is not a religion of terrorism, women's oppression, and intolerance of all other religions, and that these things are actually un-Islamic. Most of the information she gives about Islam is in service to these goals; this is not sufficient to provide a real picture of what Islam is like and what Muslims believe and practice, which is what I was looking for. She also does what seems to me to be exegetical gymnastics to explain away passages in the Qur'an that don't fit into her modern liberal conceptions of equality and religious tolerance (as I have seen liberal Christians do with the Bible); I don't think these issues can really be that simple.

I found the last chapter, "Because Being Muslim Makes Me a Better American (And Being American Makes Me a Better Muslim)," to be very problematic. The author says, "What surprises many Muslims and non-Muslims alike are the many striking parallels between the principles of Islam and the founding ideals of the United States..." and goes on to list what she sees as elements that Islam and American ideals have in common, such as social justice, freedom of speech, diversity, and capitalism, uncritically praising the US for these things; she seems to have almost no skepticism about the rosy myth of the American dream. This paragraph especially bothered me:

Like all American schoolchildren, I learned about Columbus's journey to America. He was looking for India, though, not America. When the Native Americans greeted him on the shore, he called them "Indians" because he thought he had found India. The purpose of his search for India was to overcome Muslim control of the East Indies spice trade. The "discovery" of America was motivated by a desire to outflank Muslims. How funny that in pursuit of Spain's policy against Muslims, Columbus, who had been commissioned by Spain, inadvertently found America? Years later, America would become home to over seven million Muslims, maybe even as many as twenty million. The country that Columbus has been credited for "discovering" would stand for the same principles of the religion his voyage was meant to undermine.

I do want to take into account the forces that would drive her not to be critical of the US in a book defending Islam - many people in her intended audience would probably take substantial criticism of the US to be a confirmation of the worst stereotypes and slanders they had heard.

Does anyone know of a better book on the topic?

(Edit: too many tags again)