Customer Reviews

Contemporary Muslim Apocalyptic Literature (Religion and Politics)

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David Cook is a true scholar. He has taken on the unwanted job of exploring a very dark and foreign world that very few Westerners have explored - but that is entirely relevant to our times. Cook very abley guides the unitiated reader through the frightening and often bizzare world of the modern Muslim apocalyptic writers. What do Muslims believe about End-Time prophecy? Who is ad-Dajjal - the Muslim version of the Anrichrist? Who is the Islamic Messiah figure? Where does America sit in most Islamic End-Time narratives? Cook deals with these and other issues in a very readable non-technical fashion. This book fills a void as it covers an essential aspect of the mind-set of many of today's radical Islamists. Absolutely fascinating stuff for sure. Well worth the time.

David Cook is an Assistant Professor of Religion at Rice University. He is also one of the world's most broadly knowledgeable scholars of contemporary Islam. In this pioneering work he examines the Apocalyptic Literature of Islam and reverses one of the major cliches of the scholarship of the past that the focus on the Apocalyptic was primarily a Shiite pursuit.
Cook brings a variety of sources to show just how significant the Apocalptic literature is in Sunni Islam also. He talks to a large number of people and uses his fluency in Arabic to probe both the scholarly teachings, and the mindsets of ordinary followers of Islam.
He shows just the way modern apocalyptic Literature has deviated from the traditional Literature. And he too shows how the materials are used in promoting anti- Semitic hatred. In reading the Apocalyptic Literature he too gives a frightening picture of a world in which conspiratorial thinking is primary, one which has detached itself from the tests of evidence and contradictory fact.
Perhaps inadvertently Cook provides yet another link in the solid chain of evidence building as to the fundamentally adversarial relation Islam displays toward the Western world and its Values.
Cook it might be added provides a wealth of examples and introduces the reader to a large number of names and ideas that they are probably wholly unfamiliar with. One might even be amused at some of the strange ideas which he finds in his researches , if that is, they were not so frightening.

I admit that this book had my jaw sitting on my chest many times. I remain grateful to the author for having done the work needed! I have watched the news many times, and been perplexed by the comments put forward by "Radical Muslims". I did not know what to do with the comments that I was exposed to. My own experience has been with muslims who were gentle of nature, and I was quite confused, and perplexed with recent events. This book was helpful to me ! I give this book 5 stars!

You can tell much about a culture through its literature. "Contemporary Muslim Apocalyptic Literature" is a scholarly examination of the modern Islamic view of the apocalypse and how it applies to today's touchy and tricky ground involving the religion. Looking at the sources, the influences, the impact on society, and the messages of the literature on modern Islamic society, "Contemporary Muslim Apocalyptic Literature" is a solid way to help understand a culture that needs understanding in today's shrinking world.