Let me start with my summary statement: Karen Armstrong's Islam, A Short History is a concise, eminently interesting, and quite useful work of art.

The first eighty pages are an introduction to Muhammad's life, to the establishment of the Muslim community, and to the situations facing this community from the time of the Prophet's immediate successors though the Umayyad dynasty and the early days of the Abbasids. I have yet to find a text that covers for students all the early Islamic historical information I think is important to cover in the amount of time I have, but Armstrong's book "fails" me only in one or two minor areas: I like a little more on Bedouin culture and pre-Islamic Arabia. These shortcomings are almost nugatory in light of how well Armstrong does the rest.

The remainder of the book deals with the "Culmination" of Islam, including the Crusades and the period of the Mongols; with "Islam Triumphant" (section 4), which is an introduction to the Safavids, the Moguls, and the Ottomans; and final section that looks at the difficulties Islam has faced in its increasing contact with the West. This last section includes a clear discussion of the move from agrarian societies to technological societies in general, and the difficulties concomitant when modernization is forced upon colonial lands: a situation faced by a number of countries with large Muslim populations. The explanation is helpful in putting not only Islamic fundamentalism into context, but any fundamentalism. And, as Armstrong points out, Islam was the last of the three Abrahamic religions to develop a fundamentalist strain. She presents fundamentalism as "a global fact that has surfaced in every major faith in response to the problems of our modernity" (p. 164),

Armstrong's presentation of the problems facing Ali and the early Shiite community is both sensitive and succinct. She weaves the development of Shi'ism in through a number of other topics, but she does so as well as any study I've seen, including much larger works. Although she only alludes to the miraculous powers described by authors like Amir Moezzi, she does include the clairvoyance many other authors do not even mention in relation to the Shiite Imams, and she explains (again, clearly and summarily) how the Zaydis and the Ismailis split off from the Twelvers and the main philosophical tenents that distinguish them.

It was in part because of the smoothness of this "weave," and in even larger part because of Armstrong's sensitivity that the words "work of art" were chosen in the first paragraph above. She has taken on nearly all of the West's unenlightened fears, criticisms, and misunderstandings regarding Islam (inferior status of women, the veil, fundamentalist violence, polygamy...) and shown how they fit into the Islamic context in a manner that is lucid and compassionate. Armstrong, a self-avowed woman without religious affiliation, is here working to help us understand one another at the deepest level, but to do so without glossing over difficult issues and with the scholar's insight.

The book comes with a twenty-page chronology (important dates in the history of Islam), a section entitled "key figures in the history of Islam" (10 pages), a 4-page glossary of Arabic terms, and seven pages of "suggestions for further reading."

review ©2000 by David Streight and RSiSS

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