Book Review - Muslims: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices

Reflection Assignment                                                               04/11/15

Nadia Syed

        While reading the introduction to Andrew Rippin’s book, Muslims: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices, I came to a surprising realization that I agreed with almost everything the author wrote. In the book’s opening sentence, Rippin writes, “In the fifteen years since the first edition of this book appeared, scholarly writing in the field of Islamic Studies has proceeded at a rapid pace (Rippin, 1).” He explains that the cause of this is undoubtedly due to substantial and unfortunate events that have taken place surrounding Muslims. These events, for example the destruction of the World Trade Centre towers, have led people to seek more knowledge on Islam, but on the downside it has also led Islam to be under heavy criticism and attack.

        As a Muslim, I have witnessed these attacks personally, and a couple of my closest friends have been victims as well. The idea that “Islam is misunderstood (Rippin, 1)” as Rippin wrote, is central to my beliefs. I expected the introduction of his book to provide an overview of important events, history or people within Islam, but to my surprise, it included much more than that. I learned two key ideas throughout the introduction and these ideas may lead to a better understanding of Islam.

        Rippin explains that there is a challenge to write books on Islam because authors want to “avoid the tough questions in order either to simplify or to seem ‘sympathetic’ to Islam (Rippin’s, 1-2).” To him, and to myself as well, this isn’t giving the religion the appreciation it deserves. By not critically analyzing Islam the way Christianity and Judaism were, you are saying that Islam isn’t worthy of scientific study. To me, this undermines the influence the religion has over millions of people around the world and it isn’t a fair treatment. This was one of the key ideas I learned. To fully understand Islam better, one of the steps will be to overcome the fear of receiving tough questions and provide thorough scientific study and analysis that the religion deserves.

        Another thing that I learned throughout my religion course as well as this introduction is that Islam has many similar concepts related to both Christianity and Judaism. I had not realized this fact before taking the religion course. Rippin also helped me realize the warnings of heaven and hell; prophets and messiahs are all a part the three major western religions (Rippin, 5). A lot of people to this day, might not know this fact. So, it brings up an important lesson, that we must educate ourselves before jumping to conclusions. By educating ourselves of important issues we face in today’s society, I think it is the key to understanding Islam in its truest form while not allowing the distorted concepts the media displays to affect our judgements.