What I'm Reading: What's Right with Islam

By Jim Cason on 11/09/2010 @ 09:30 AM

Tags: Interfaith Conversations

In the conclusion to his book, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf reports that the most common question he has been asked since September 11, 2001 is “What can we do to solve the problem between the Muslim world and the West?” In his 2004 book, “What’s Right With Islam: A New Vision for Muslims and the West,” Iman Feisal offers suggestions for how to build bridges between Muslim, Christian, Jewish and other faith communities.

For a non-scholar such as myself, this book provides some helpful reminders about the common roots of our different faiths that I found very useful this summer during the controversy over the Muslim Cultural Center in downtown New York City. Speaking from his own experience, the Imam then provides chapters on “What’s Right with Islam” and “What’s Right with America.”

One chapter of the book that I particularly appreciated is titled “We’re All History.” That chapter begins: “Our history shapes how we continue to act, and thus out future.” How true. I don’t come to the same conclusions as Imam Feisal about everything (and I was particularly concerned about the inclusion in the book of an appendix offering some support for U.S. Muslims to participate in the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan).

Yet this is an important book and one that has helped me understand a little better the current conversations on faith in the United States. His conclusion bears repeating

I can think of no greater goal in the twenty-first century than ushering in the era predicted by the Old Testament prophet Isaiah: when nations “will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will the train for war anymore.”