Islam From 3 Specific Books Term Paper

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Islam According to Three Books

Though Islam is certainly suffering from an image problem in the West, there is no denying the fact that it is the one of the major religions and boasts of millions of followers in almost every part of the world. Our assessment of Islam and its various teachings may not exactly be perfect because of the negative perceptions and interpretations currently doing rounds in the West. But these misconceptions have often been reinforced by those we mistakenly call authorities on the sensitive subject of Islam. One such author is Bernard Lewis who with his two books, Crisis of Islam and What went wrong, has done more harm to the image of Islam than he probably meant to. In these days of extreme fear and repulsion when Americans are simply scared of Islam and most of us are suffering from Islam phobia,

Bernard Lewis has only fueled the fire with his books on the history of Islam and how it turned into a so-called terrorist religion. In all honesty, after reading these two books by Lewis, I can say with some degree of certainty that his views are highly biased and some of them are definitely disturbing. Such books tend to hurt Muslim sentiment and can even lead to bigger misunderstanding and problems. What we need today is someone informing us of the truth and no one can does this better than a person who is a Muslim himself since he knows Islam deeply or someone like Karen Armstrong who maintains an impartial stand on the subject and thus reveals Islam positively.

Bernard Lewis's What went wrong is nothing short of an intellectual disaster because it instead of explaining why Islam and terrorism are two different things, the author's thesis revolves around the idea that Islam has indeed turned into a religion that promotes terrorism even if that was not what its original objectives were. The author traces the history of Islam and goes back to the beginning of Islam when it was in its golden period of expansion and success.

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However even in this history too, there is little original thought as the author lacks any first hand knowledge of Islam and what he knows is borrowed from encyclopedic accounts of Islam's rise and history.

For Lewis, Islam turned from "the greatest military power" and "the foremost economic power" turned into a religion where Jihad means terrorism and Moslems are nothing but fundamentalists. What he fails to acknowledge is the fact that not all practicing Moslems are terrorists or even close to being one, and that Islam doesn't teach terrorism but some people wrong interpret the religion and its various teachings. Yes, the author does focus on the latter argument but only to explain that all have got the religion wrong- in other words, every Muslim has failed to understand the religion and it had indeed become a religion of terrorists. We seriously need to question that validity and veracity of such statements and arguments for the book can mislead many into believing that Islam is closely connected with terrorism because every single Muslim has got the religion wrong.

The author should have been more sensitive to the Muslim sentiment and to the fact that there is an ever-increasing anti-American sentiment that such books will only fuel further. Crisis of Islam is written on similar lines. This book again is full of misconceptions that have been backed and reinforced by unreliable sources. Connecting militancy with Islamic rise of seventh century, the author wrongly assumes that, "For [Osama] bin Laden, his declaration of war against the United States marks the resumption of the struggle for religious dominance of the….....

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