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Inside Islam: A Guide for Catholics: 100 Questions and Answers

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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.

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.

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.

After Sept. 11, Robert Spencer's book, "Islam Unveiled," became very popular. As a Catholic, I was hesitant to read a book that I feared would take Koranic passages out of context and then present them as proof of Islam's falsity (precisely because this is what many people do to Christianity). A friend lent me this book, however, and assured me that it wasn't agenda-driven or unreasonable. I noticed that the co-author, Daniel Ali, is a former Muslim, so I decided to give it a shot and I'm so glad that I did. (I learned more about Islam from this book than I did from my religious studies class!)

Given Islam's rising popularity and rapid expansion into Western society, we cannot afford to ignore Islam's claim to be God's final revelation. Despite our best intentions of tolerance among all religions, we cannot be closed-minded to the possibility that a religion might proclaim untruth -- or even injustice. "Inside Islam," which contrasts Islam's claims with those of Christianity, is a must-read for all Christians, and Catholics in particular.

Utilizing a highly readable question-and-answer format, the authors draw from a huge base of knowledge of Islamic theology, scholarship and tradition to demonstrate that Islam cannot be what it claims to be. Extensive endnotes provide the reader with the opportunity to cross-examine sources.

You will read how Mohammad's exposure to Christian heresies distorted his view of Christianity and how these misinterpretations have been incorporated into the Koran -- and how they still inform Muslim views of Christians as idolators to this day. (Mohammad, for example, apparently thought that the Trinity was a union of God, Mary, and Jesus -- and that God had sexual relations with Mary in order to conceive a son. Mohammad understandably saw this crude idea as unworthy of a perfect God.)

You will read how fundamentalist Muslims can appeal to the Koran and the Hadith to support their ideas about the inferiority of women, the inferiority of Christians and Jews (who are called "apes and swine" in the Koran), and the imperative to fight unbelievers.

You will learn how the conceptions of God, humanity, salvation, and the afterlife radically differ in Islam and Christianity. (I thought these theological contrasts were alone worth the entire price of the book!) You will read about the Koran's curious "abrogation theory" which attempts to reconcile contradictions in the Koran by insisting that Allah can change his mind about morality and truth.

"Inside Islam" is a profoundly important book. I would recommend it to Catholics, Christians, and even Muslims. To avoid it, assuming that Islam is a "religion of peace" since it is a religion at all, would be myopic. This book's only agenda is the pursuit of truth. Give it a shot -- you'll be surprised by what you find.

When this book came home from the local Catholic bookshop, I thought "not another islamic apologetic!".

As someone that had read the Koran with a critical eye over 20 years ago, I failed to understand not only how islam can spread with such disastrous consequences in nations that are, on the whole, so accepting of difference (both western and eastern), but also why so many appear unwilling to look at islam with the critical mind it deserves. We have a long and positive habit of developing critical attitudes to various sectarian approaches, and this along with all traditions, especially with a large following, deserves to be carefully and broadly assessed.

This book, in many ways, simply shows a fundamental aspect of islam that our western style of thinking partially blinds us to: not consistency, but obedience; not clarity, but obedience; not truth-seeking, but obedience.

A book I would highly recommend to all, Catholics and other Christians as well as non-Christians... and muslims silently questioning the content of their own tradition.

All Catholics need to read this book. There was no peace on Mohammed. He was a butcher and a false prophet, nothing more than a warrior king. The only "prophet" not dealing directly with God. The angel in the cave was most likely Lucifer the great deceiver, not Gabriel. Islam will only lead you to the prophet himself who is in the seventh level of hell being tormented forever separated from the true God who is pure love. Jesus stated, "no one comes to the father but through me."

Spencer and Ali have assembled an informative, well-written and easily accessible guide to understanding how Islam compares to Catholicism.

Organized in a question-and-answer format, the text is broken into digestible sections that allow readers to read or re-read areas of particular interest.

It is the only guide of its kind to be released in decades and deserves a wide readership.

Discerning readers should ignore the smear campaign being conducted by Islamic apologists against this book.

Robert Spencer, firmly established as one of the foremost Christian critics of Islam (he announces his devout Catholic faith in the introduction in a way he did not in previous books) has done a very useful service with "Inside Islam: A Guide for Catholics".

In this book Spencer answers in a clear and convincing manner one hundred important questions about the Muslim faith, covering such issues as what Muslims claim to believe, contradictions within the Qur'an, the nature of Allah compared to the God of the Bible, and the effects Islamic teaching has had on the culture of Muslim countries over the fourteen centuries since Muhammad's time.

What is especially noteworthy is that, though he is clearly not sympathetic to Muslims, Robert Spencer has an ability to explain how Muslims themselves see their beliefs that was never discussed, for instance, in the PIG to Islam . This is most especially seen in the way Spencer is able to explain easily how Muslims see themselves as successors of Abraham and that, contrary to the view of many people within both Christianity and Islam, Islam does not believe in the same deity that Christianity or even Judaism does. He is also balanced enough to not omit the fact that Islam in Southeast Asia was not spread by the sword so much as by preaching - a pity he did not do that in the PIG to Islam!

Spencer's explanation of important points about what Islam teaches about sin, forgiveness thereof and salvation is also very well-done and most of it is generally ignored by almost all studies of comparative religion. Recalling the Qur'an itself as i read it when a child makes me doubt Islam denies free will to the extent Spencer says, but he does illustrate (as he did in the PIG to Islam) how Islam's belief in so powerful a deity has had a stifling effect on Muslim cultures. "Inside Islam: A Guide for Catholics" shows clearly how Islam supports slavery because people are slaves of Allah (and I know that freeing a slave is apparently punishment according to one verse of the Qur'an).

"Inside Islam: A Guide for Catholics" also shows clearly how the Qur'an evolved in ways that most Muslims would consider heretical today, and the role of the Sunnah (also emphasised firmly in the PIG to Islam) in authorising some Muslim teachings that most Westerners would consider unethical at best and which are not found in the Qur'an.

It is true that Spencer's claims that Islam is racist are rather dubious - though these come from the Sunnah rather than from the Qur'an itself. Spencer is nonetheless right that non-Arab Muslims do tend to believe Arab culture superior to their own and that it is rare for Muslims to maintain most of their pre-Islamic culture (though he does not discuss similar examples with Christianity). His viewpoint that Muhammad must have been literate and pretended otherwise is similarly not perfectly argued, though I myself know absolutely nothing about literacy in pre-Islamic Arabia.

These criticisms, though, do not detract from the undoubted merit of the book, which is superior to Spencer's other efforts simply through being more balanced.

My pastor recommended this book during one of his sunday sermons.
This book does an outstanding job of explaining various aspects of the muslim faith and of the islamic mind set.

The authors quote directly from the Koran and contrast that with direct quotes from the Bible.

This is niether an in depth study of Islam nor a superficial glossing of the subject. It gives good solid information in the time honored method of Question and answer.

Buy it new or used, but Buy it.

If you want to understand the essence of why so much of the Islamic world is at war with Western Secularism, then you need to understand (A) the Koran, and (B) some history of Mohammed. This book, one of the best I have ever read, is it. It's short, to the point, objective, and unbelievably informative.

It's from two authors -- one an expert on the Middle East, and the other a former Muslim who converted to Catholicism. Now, don't let that fact, about the conversion, dissuade you from reading this. Obviously he left Islam because of the conflicts he had with it, but this book is NOT an Islam-bashing book; it's a very serious Islam-critiquing book. There is no hyperbole, no revenge; just facts.

Also, the title is misleading -- you DON'T have to be a Catholic to understand and appreciate this book; you simply have to have *some* ancient history under your belt. In fact, if I had written the book, I would have titled it, "Inside Islam: A Guide for Anyone with a Basic Understanding of Human History."

Outstanding book, and easy read. I read it in a single afternoon.