Islam for Dummies by Malcolm Clark Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Islam for Dummies
Book Review: A Must Have!
Summary: 5 Stars
I recently ordered this book because my boyfriend of a little over a year is Muslim and I felt I needed to learn more about his religion. This book helped me understand his background SO much more and we've had some great conversations about his beliefs and mine (me being Christian). I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is looking to get more insight on the Muslim religion for what ever purpose!Book Review: A good learning tool about Islam
Summary: 3 Stars
I read this book several years ago as part on a bible study on Islam.
I hope you will enjoy and learn as much as I did out of it.
Book Review: Excellent content, horrible editing
Summary: 4 Stars
I would have given this book 5 stars based on content, but I have to take off a star due to the absolutely horrible editing. The publisher should be ashamed - typos EVERYWHERE ('Google' is mispelled 'Goggle' multiple times), even a couple of garbled/transposed sentences (a section comparing and constrasting Sunnis, Shias, and Sufis is just incomprehensible due to transpositions).
But putting that aside, the author is extremely knowledgable and very fair, and not without a dry sense of humor (check out the section on the possibility of women's sexual pleasure in paradise). He's also a Christian. Personally, I think it's a good idea for these sorts of books to be written by those outside the faith; a believer can never be fully objective, by definition.
Book Review: Full of plenty of information
Summary: 5 Stars
When you buy these for dummies or idiots guide's books its always a grab bag. Either they presuppose you are a total moron, and fill the book with so much fluff that you end up getting very little actual knowledge of the topic. Or, they present the material in a semi-academic manner and you actually learn something. Thank god this book is the latter of the two. The book is well structured, and presented from a realistic point of view. At no point in the book are Muslims presented as evil or good. They are people, who just happen to view life from a completely different perspective than most Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists Taoists....any religion. Yes the book lacks silly anecdotes and the perspective of a Muslim. However silly anecdotes tend to take the place of concrete information and a Muslim perspective would only provide bias (if you doubt me read The Complete Idiot's Guide To Judaism. It reads like a Children's book with the goal of conversion). For the reviewer that labeled this book dry and lacking humor I recommend a children's book on Islam. They have very little words, a whole lot of silliness, and plenty of pictures. You should probably have time for thatBook Review: I WISH I COULD GIVE ZERO STARS
Summary: 1 Stars
Besides the bad grammar, spelling errors, boring delivery and the fact that this book reads like the worst of textbooks....the most unnerving aspect of this compilation is its "politically correct" nature. This reads like Islam 101 for the Sesame Street crowd and is completely uncritical of the most common conceptions from the western perspective. This book completely shies away from anything even close to controversial (Muhammed's checkered past, the Koran's dubious history and the un-popular fundamentals of what a lot of people - Muslims themselves - would consider an intolerant religion. There wasn't even a mention in this book about the questionable relationship between foreign funding and the recent building of Mosques - both in America and internationally.)
Instead, this book fills its pages with dogma and tradition; including over-views of obscure offshoots of Islam, spending more time with their history than their beliefs. The pretentiousness of this volume assumes that the average "dummy" cares about hearing an entire chapter of "noteworthy Muslims" as compared to spending a paragraph on why Muslims are so often equated with intolerance and violence throughout their relatively short history of existence.
And of course the author is a christian - which is questionable in and of itself. Wouldn't a practicing Muslim have been a better authority on this subject?
The author does seem to have a solid knowledge of what he's talking about - but doesn't say much about what a beginner would be curious about. (Even the way he laid out the chapters - not mentioning the history of Abraham, Ishmael and Isaac until chapter 16 of a 21 chapter book.....seems strange.)
I sincerely hope that this book is just an example of a scared publishing company, afraid to be critical of Islam and not what a 30 year tenured professor would really expect "dummies" to care about.