Inside Islam: A Guide for Catholics [Paperback]

Daniel Ali (Author), Robert Spencer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 2003

Islam. For some, the word is frightening; for others, mysterious. For all, it is a religious force that cannot be ignored. Now here’s a question-and-answer book on Islam written specifically for Catholics. Inside Islam addresses Islam’s controversial teachings on God, jihad, the role of women, and more.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Robert Spencer is the author of two previous books on Islam, "Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions About the World's Fastest Growing Faith" (Encounter Books, 2002), and an in-depth study of jihad, "Onward Muslim Soldiers: How Jihad Still Threatens America and the West (Regnery Publishing, 2003).

Daniel Ali converted to Catholicism from Islam in 1998. He has gained national recognition as the founder of the Christian-Islamic Forum. He is also the co-host of the video series "Islam and Christianity" with Fr. Mitch Pacwa, S.J. on the Eternal World Television Network.

Product Details

• Paperback: 179 pages
• Publisher: Ascension Pr (September 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0965922855
• ISBN-13: 978-0965922852
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (34 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #291,523 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

ROBERT SPENCER is the director of Jihad Watch, a program of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, and the author of ten books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Truth About Muhammad and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) (both Regnery). He is coauthor, with Pamela Geller, of The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration's War On America (Threshold Editions/Simon & Schuster).

Spencer is a weekly columnist for Human Events and FrontPage Magazine, and has led seminars on Islam and jihad for the United States Central Command, United States Army Command and General Staff College, the U.S. Army's Asymmetric Warfare Group, the FBI, the Joint Terrorism Task Force, and the U.S. intelligence community.

Spencer has also written eleven monographs and well over three hundred articles about jihad and Islamic terrorism. In addition to the above books, he is the author of Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions About the World's Fastest Growing Faith (Encounter); Onward Muslim Soldiers: How Jihad Still Threatens America and the West (Regnery); Religion of Peace? Why Christianity Is and Islam Isn't (Regnery), a refutation of moral equivalence and call for all the beneficiaries and heirs of Judeo-Christian Western civilization, whatever their own religious or philosophical perspective may be, to defend it from the global jihad; Stealth Jihad: How Radical Islam is Subverting America without Guns or Bombs (Regnery), an expose of how jihadist groups are advancing their agenda in the U.S. today by means other than terrorist attacks; and The Complete Infidel's Guide to the Koran (Regnery). He is coauthor, with Daniel Ali, of Inside Islam: A Guide for Catholics (Ascension), and editor of the essay collection The Myth of Islamic Tolerance: How Islamic Law Treats Non-Muslims (Prometheus). Spencer's books have been translated into many languages, including Spanish, Italian, Finnish, Korean, and Bahasa Indonesia.

Along with his weekly columns, Spencer has completed a weekly Qur'an commentary at Jihad Watch, Blogging the Qur'an, which has been translated into Czech, Danish, German, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. He is a contributing writer to Steven Emerson's Investigative Project on Terrorism. His articles on Islam and other topics have appeared in the New York Post, the Washington Times, the Dallas Morning News, the UK's Guardian, Canada's National Post, Middle East Quarterly, WorldNet Daily, First Things, Insight in the News, National Review Online, and many other journals.

Spencer has discussed jihad, Islam, and terrorism at a workshop sponsored by the U.S. State Department and the German Foreign Ministry. He has also appeared on the BBC, ABC News, CNN, FoxNews's O'Reilly Factor, the Sean Hannity Show, the Glenn Beck Show, Fox and Friends, and many other Fox programs, PBS, MSNBC, CNBC, C-Span, France24 and Croatia National Televison (HTV), as well as on numerous radio programs including Bill O'Reilly's Radio Factor, The Laura Ingraham Show, Bill Bennett's Morning in America, Michael Savage's Savage Nation, The Sean Hannity Show, The Alan Colmes Show, The G. Gordon Liddy Show, The Neal Boortz Show, The Michael Medved Show, The Michael Reagan Show, The Rusty Humphries Show, The Larry Elder Show, The Barbara Simpson Show, Vatican Radio, and many others. He has been a featured speaker at Dartmouth College, Stanford University, New York University, Brown University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of Virginia, the College of William and Mary, Washington University of St. Louis, the University of Wisconsin at Madison, the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, and many other colleges and universities.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

72 of 77 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great insight into Islam, April 27, 2005

By 

Barnacca - See all my reviews

This review is from: Inside Islam: A Guide for Catholics (Paperback)

I have heard so many arguments from Arab Muslims about how non-Arabic speaking authors are incapable of fully comprehending Islam. On the other hand, all the non-Arabic speaking converts to Islam do so because of deep conviction and understanding of the faith! I am a Christian Arab and I identify with most of what is written in this book. We always hear about the need for Christians to reach out to Muslims but never the other way around. Those who criticize the Crusades ignore the bloody history of the Muslim expansion. As we say in the Middle East "A camel never sees its own hump"

Highly recommended book.

110 of 124 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Islam: 100 Brief Basics, May 8, 2004

By 

William Garrison Jr. (Bellevue, WA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Inside Islam: A Guide for Catholics (Paperback)

In this paperback Robert Spencer and Daniel Ali (an ex-Muslim) present brief basics about Islam: the Five Pillars, the Six Articles of Faith, why Muhammad turned against the Jews and Christians, why Muslims believe Jesus is a muslim, why Muslims believe Jesus was NOT crucified but that a substitute instead took his place, contradictions of alcohol use, why Muslims believe the Jews fictionalized the Bible, why Allah is not the same God of Christians, how Muslims view predestiny versus "free will," where Allah in the Quran permits slavery, the different types of jihad, the virgins("houris") who await suicide martyers, why Mohammad said Jews and Christians cannot live in Arabia, status of women and their veils, what Muslims can expect in Islam's heaven or "Paradise," where the anti-Semitic texts are in the Quran, contradictions of similar passages within the Quran -- along with other snippets of differences between Islam and Christianity. The citations are informative endnotes. Fundamentalist Muslims won't like this book because the authors quote specific "ayat" or versus in the Quran, and analyze them in their historical context. This paperback makes for a nice informative "theology background" introduction before reading Robert Spencer's two other books on Islam: "Islam Unveiled" and "Onward Muslim Soldiers." One does not need to be a Catholic to comprehend the topics discussed in this book.

49 of 53 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Seems honest, well researched, nuanced, December 1, 2004

By 

Edward U. (NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Inside Islam: A Guide for Catholics (Paperback)

People tend to assume that all religions are basically the same. If you stop and think though, it often seems rather that different cults exist at different points along a spectrum extending from very benign, to very destructive, with countless points in between. Therefore, although people rarely want to think about the distinct 'textures' of distinct religions, it can be important to do so, especially in the case of a religion that until recently had little presence in the West and is now growing rapidly through conversions, immigration, and reproduction. Such is the case with Islam. Bernard Lewis, the famous scholar of Islamic history, has said that Europe will be Islamic by the end of the century. And Islam is growing rapidly in the U.S. too.

Since human rights organizations report that some 51 of the world's 53 Muslim-majority countries are currently NOT democracies that protect freedom of the press and other civil rights Westerners take for granted, it seems necessary to ask:

1. Will Islam, as it grows in the West, tend to chill or threaten civil liberties increasingly?

2. And if in some decades, a Muslim-majority should arise in a Western country, what is the likelihood that freedom and democracy will be replaced by Sharia?

3. Exactly how resistant to democracy is Islam in its core beliefs and examples?

4. Is the lack of democracy in Muslim-majority countries primarily a result of temporary historical factors having little to do with Islam?

5. Since mere debate of the previous questions is highly unlikely to lead to a consensus among experts, should not Western countries subscribe to the following prudent, pragmatic principle?: "Until at least a majority of Muslim-majority states become pluralist democracies, the West should limit Muslim immigration to make sure that Muslims have no future prospect of becoming a majority in a Western country."

Whether you agree with the above principle or not (and I don't know if Spencer does), anyone who cares about personal and social freedoms, and sees the current state of Islamic politics, can use Spencer's book to make progress in thinking about the nature of Islam. Some experts are more optimistic about Islam than he is (Karen Armstrong, Michael Novak) and any decent person will try to learn about all sides in order to avoid unbalanced or extreme views. But whether or not Spencer turns out in the long run to have been more right than wrong, his books are intelligent, nuanced, extremely well-researched and certainly worthy of inclusion in any honest study of Islam.