Islam The Religion and the People

An objective, easy-to-read introduction to Islam by Bernard Lewis, one of the West's leading experts on Islam For many people, Islam remains a mystery. Here Bernard Lewis and Buntzie Ellis Churchill examine Islam: what its adherents believe and how their religion has shaped them, their rich and diverse cultures, and their politics over more than 14 centuries. Considered one of the West's leading experts on Islam, Lewis, with Churchill, has written an illuminating introduction for those who want to understand the faith and the global challenges it confronts and presents. Whatever your political, personal, or religious views, this book will help you understand Islam's reality. Lewis and Churchill answer questions such as . . . bull; How does Islam differ from Judaism and Christianity? bull; What are the pillars of the Islamic faith? bull; What does Islam really say about peace and jihad? bull; How does the faith regard non-Muslims? bull; What are the differences between Sunni and Shi'a? bull; What does Islam teach about the position of women in society? bull; What does Islam say about free enterprise and profit? bull; What caused the rise of radical Islam? bull; What are the problems facing Muslims in the U.S. and Europe and what are the challenges posed by those minorities?

Bernard Lewis is Cleveland E. Dodge Professor of Near Eastern Studies, Emeritus, at Princeton University. He is the author of the best-sellers What Went Wrong: Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response and The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror. He has performed the invaluable service of placing current events in the context of history. Lewis has advised policymakers in the U.S., UK, and the Middle East on the complex relationship between Islam and the West.

 

A number of his articles have been extraordinarily prescient. The Return of Islam was published 3 years before the Iranian revolution, and the award-winning The Roots of Muslim Rage anticipated 9/11 by a decade. His two dozen books have been translated into more than two dozen languages, including Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Indonesian.

 

His contribution to the understanding of history has been recognized by the 15 universities that have awarded him honorary doctorates.

 

Buntzie Ellis Churchill served for 23 years as President of the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia, hosting dozens of world leaders from Mikhail Gorbachev and Margaret Thatcher to Henry Kissinger and Colin Powell. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations, she has served as a trustee of many non-profit organizations, including the Pennsylvania Institute of Technology and Drexel University. She has been awarded several honorary doctorates.

 

For a decade she hosted “WorldViews,” a daily radio show, interviewing experts on international issues

 

Preface PrefaceMore than three hundred years ago, in 1689, the great English philosopher John Locke publishedA Letter Concerning Toleration, in which he argued that "neither Pagan, nor Mahometan, nor Jew, ought to be excluded from the civil rights of the commonwealth because of religion." In this, he gave a classical formulation of an idea which helped to inspire both the French and American revolutions, and has become an essential guiding principle of the free world. This idea, sometimes called secularism, means that religion is a private and personal matter, outside the realm of government; that membership of the political community, and the rights that go with it, belong to all citizens, of any religion or of none.Religion remains, however, an immensely powerful factor in human aff airs, with profound influence on almost every aspect of public and private, social and economic, cultural and even artistic life. No study of society, whether directed by historians at the past, by social scientists at the present, or by either at the future, can afford to disregard the religious factor. To neglect or even to underrate that factor can lead to serious misunderstandings and open the way to dangerous consequences. A French statesman once said that war is too important to be left to the generals. One might also argue that religion is too important to leave to the theologians.There are many ways of studying religion, besides that of the theologians. Some study it as an art-historian studies paintings; others, as a bacteriologist studies bacteria. We are committed to no specific ideology or method, beyond that of dispassionate scholarship, which sees religion as a strand, or group of strands, among others, in the intricate pattern of human life. Such a study, in context, of the religious factor in human affairs is indispensable to understanding. In the Christian, or as some nowadays call it, the post-Christian world, religion has become, to a large extent, a personal and private matter. In the world of Islam, now in the early fifteenth century of its era, religion retains its centrality and remains a major force in public life, a basic theme of identity and therefore of loyalty.For any sort of dealings with the Muslim world, some understanding, and therefore some knowledge, of Islam is essential. Unfortunately, this is rarely available and the more common perception is based on ignorance, sometimes varied by prejudice. This is particularly dangerous at a time when the Islamic world itself is undergoing major internal struggles, the outcome of which is still far from clear. It is our hope that the following pages may provide some knowledge, and thus some understanding, of one of the world's great religions--of its glorious past, its tumultuous present, and its bitterly contested future. Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.