Rating: 
Summary: Too Brief and too Crowded
Review: Armstrong tries to fit 1400 years of the history of one of the world's most influential religions into under 200 pages. While giving me a jist of the origins of Islam and some quick peek into Muslim beliefs, she has to rush through so many names of political and religious leaders.When learning about Islam one of the most common points of interest is Islamic fundamentalism. Due to the book's length, she gives it short shrift. (Her other books are probably more helpful.) Much of her limited argument is that Western colonialism brought on the fundamentalist reaction. She also tries to tie Islamic fundamentalism with Christian and Jewish fundamentalism, but doesn't explain why the Islamic strain seems to be the most violent. What I did get from the book is the intimate ties between politics and Islamic beliefs. Although the Islamic empires of the past believed in religious tolerance, a goal of Islam on earth is to build a just community. Doing so would being a Muslim in line with Allah's will and closer to the divine. The book should only be considered a start to an understanding of Islam. It is a fast read and does offer plenty of suggestions for further reading.
Rating: 
Summary: Message heard
Review: Armstrong lives up to her reputation of belonging to a small group of orientalists unaffected by the events that has taken shape recently. She correctly points out the fact that Islam's mission was to create a just society in which all members were treated with absolute respect and that state affair was not a detraction from spirituality but part religion itself. The background and the prevailing social structure to which Muhammad (PBUH) brought this message is well presented.
Rating: 
Summary: Painting an ideal
Review: Karen Armstong, the former nun and popular writer of liberal theology-lite, here offers a short review of one of the worlds great religions. Hardly an expert in the subject, Armstrong's work offers what might best are considered an idealists view of Islam, often bending over to avoid critical analysis and paint the faith in the best light. In some cases, this is quite refreshing, like pointing out Islam's extraordinary history as one of the worlds most enlightened and intellectual empires in the middle Ages. The flowering of scholarship, art, and science, as well as Islam's role in preserving the works of the ancient Greeks that were often being burned in the west, deserves attention. The weakness of her work is that, while she puts the distant past in context, she stubbornly refuses to do likewise in her analysis of recent history. Looking at ancient Islam, Armstrong is surely correct that Mohammed must be looked at in his context, the product of an extremely violent, patriarchic, clan based society with a thoroughly different concept of rights and justice then we have today. However, her examination of the last 2-300 years of Islam fails to analyze the factors that brought one of the world's most enlightened and advanced societies to its current state. Some obviously will complain that this conflates Islam and Arabic society, but as many scholars already point out the latter sprung from the former and is indelibly marked by that lineage. In any case, the fact that the area of the world from Morocco to Pakistan boasts not a single democratically elected government or society allowing freedom of expression (excepting, of course, Israel) speaks volumes about Islam's current position. Armstrong, however, does not wish to see the state of the people living in this region as having anything to do with Islam. Nor does she offer sufficient analysis of the increasing spread of the most intolerant and peculiarist forms of Islam through schools funded by Persian Gulf petrol dollars. Madrasha springing up from Chicago to Pakistan endowed by the Saudi are making Islam less tolerant and more retrograde. Armstrong also has a problem with fact checking, such as her assertion that the west "stole" the Suez Canal. Readers looking for a more scholarly and thoughtful view of Islam should examine the works of Professor Bernard Lewis, one of the leading scholars of Islam and the Arab world. Islam as a faith offers much to admire and find beautiful. However, Islam is currently a faith at a crossroads that must either descend into its past or find a way to integrate itself into the modern milieu. Will Islam find a way to coexist with modern notions of equality, democracy, and human dignity? The question remains open. This Herculean task will only be accomplishable with careful open eyed analysis. White washes do a grave disservice to this critical question.
Rating:
Summary: Only Worth The First 139 Pages
Review: The most important aspect of Islam: A Short History is its length. Having now read this volume in the A Modern Library series and two volumes in the Penguin Lives series, I am starting to see the limitations of the endeavor to produce slim, inexpensive volumes. Although Armstrong's Buddha is not affected by the editorial constraints of these throwbacks to the Everyman books, Islam: A Short History is. But there are also problems with the argument, too. In the first four chapters, Armstrong's coverage of the Islamic world is comprehensive and efficient. As in A History of God (HG), she makes a valid point: Muslims interpret the legitimacy of Islam by its worldly effects. Therefore, politics and religion are difficult to distinguish by using a western interpretation based on the Christian separation of God and world. Islam is also about practice, not belief, which is again a Christian interpretation. So, for instance, when Mehmed II conquers Constantinople, it is a ringing endorsement of Islamic legitimacy, but the British in India causes defensiveness. Armstrong also has an interesting line on the limitations of the Shariah: it is an antiquated pre-modern agrarian code ill-equipped for the industrial age. Until page 141, Armstrong has accomplished her task, but then in the last chapter, it unravels. Already, in her discussions of the Ottoman Empire, centuries flow past at warp speed, but the last chapter is completely unlike the preceding four. Where before the book was history spiced with commentary, the last chapter is editorial littered with dates. Basically a quick and dirty discussion on jihad, the last chapter is theological, not historical. In the preceding four chapters, Armstrong again, as in HG, respectfully presents numerous scholars, like Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd, but the last chapter is a defensive apology for various jihad commentators, such as Sayyid Qutb and Mawdudi. Armstrong valiantly tries to salvage the good in Islam from the damage wrought by these scholars' followers. However, she completely abandons history for commentary. Plugging dates and people may be pedestrian, but a source text for beginners should just provide basic facts without boring the reader. Armstrong provides a handy index, maps, a glossary, an index of key figures, and endnotes, but her reading suggestions also suffer from the faults of the last chapter: too much breadth and not enough scrutiny. Those wanting more theology need only look here for help. The editorial limits of the series are probably responsible for the breadth of the last chapter's focus, but judging from the reading suggestions, it may have also saved us from a longer commentary. Armstrong's prose is as deft and inspired as always, but she loses her nerve in the last chapter. If I forget the last chapter, I can endorse this little book. But, the book very nearly inspires me to continue studying, if only to refute Armstrong's half-hearted editorializing.
Rating: 
Summary: A dishonest account
Review: To see why the author is not truthful about Islam, read Irshad Manji, The Trouble with Islam. Manji is very honest about her faith, and is at the same time, loyal to the faith. Manji admits that the Prophet of Islam is an opressor of women. She admits that the Koran has Antisemitic diatribes, and is full of contradictions. Unlike Armstrong, she is honest.
Rating:
Summary: Islam and democracy: an imposible goal?
Review: Other reviewers have noticed, better than me, the flaws of the book, regarding the consistency of it - is not all only history -. My point is the historical evolution of the arab political states. The review Ms. Armstrong makes shows that only in the XXth century arab nations tried democracy as a way of goverment, but, as Ms. Armstrong notes, the western countries create setbacks when the results of the elections don't please them (the sad example of France foreign policy and Algeria and Tunisia in the mid nineties). I think that the future of the region and of their relations towards western countries will depend deeply on the acceptance, by the western leaders, that the region and their people need to follow their own history of mistakes and learning, and still they do that way, is right they have enough freedom to develop their very particular ways of political organization. The western modernization the region needs is the western modernization their people could accept, at their own pace. I have the feeling the besides all our kind manners and politically right words, the western political elites think like Mr. Belusconi,head of italian goverment: Our culture is superior. That systematic underestimation of a just different way of being and acting towards life and other people should produce only troubles. And it does. Islam and democracy is a posible goal only if the western world respects more the arab world than before, at the same time they cooperate together as equal partners. Other ways - like imposing "our" standards, with no regard to the history of the countries and their colective values - produce the present that we live now and that we watch at TV news. The western world is part of the problems of the arab world. And fortunately, an active part of their solutions too.
Rating: 
Summary: Karen Armstrong has no hypocrisy
Review: To the people who gave low stars on this great book, please read the following (not from Quran though):
"When you march up to attack a city, first offer it terms of peace. If it agrees to your terms of peace and opens its gates to you, all the people to be found in it shall serve you in forced labor. But if it refuses to make peace with you and instead offers you battle ... put every male in it to the sword. But the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take unto thyself; and thou shalt eat the spoil of thine enemies, which the LORD thy God hath given thee. Thus shalt thou do unto all the cities which are very far off from thee, which are not of the cities of these nations. But of the cities of these people, which the LORD thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth. But thou shalt utterly destroy them; (Deuteronomy 20:10-17). "The Lord said to Moses, "Take vengeance on the Midianites for the Israelites. After that, you will be gathered to your people." So Moses said to the people, "Arm some of your men to go to war against the Midianites and to carry out the Lord's vengeance on them. They burned all the towns where the Midianites had settled, as well as all their camps. "Have you allowed all the women to live?" he asked them. "They were the ones who followed Balaam's advice and were the means of turning the Israelites away from the Lord in what happened at Peor, so that a plague struck the Lord's people. Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man....(Read the rest in Old Testament Numbers 31) During the Bosnia war in 1992, the Christain Serbs did exactly the same to the Bosnian Muslims. Tens of thousands of Bosnian Muslim women were brutally raped (as young as six years old child to as old as 60 years old woman) and almost 200,000 people died. The Christian Serbs were following the bible word by word. Those who think it was only Muslims who committed atrocities in the past, the following is a list for them to review: 1. Crusaders raped and murdered millions in the middle east for two centuries. They not only attacked the Muslims and the Jews, also the local Arab Christians. To them and their descendants even the Arab Christians are bad. 2. The Europeans brutally terrorized and colonized the whole world for the last five centuries- Africa, Asia, Latin America, and even America by decimating the native Indians (even by deliberately spreading germs). They committed untold atrocities in many parts. Ya! Muslims sould not have been in Europe at all! 3. Spanish inquisition left not even a single Muslims or Jews in Spain. Many were murdered, driven away to North Africa, and forcefully converted to Christianity. Have you guys heard of conversos, matamoros? How many Christians were living in Spain under the Moors? Ask your conscience. 4. 2,000 Muslim women and children were brutally gang-raped for seven days and later murdered by the Lebanese Christians which was permitted by then Israeli defense minister Ariel Sharon in Shattila Shabra refugee camp. 5. 1 million tutsis were brutally murdered by their Christian brethren in Rwanda in just a month! The list will go on forever. Bottom line is getting rid of hypocrisy is very difficult process. It needs an open unbiased mind to start.
Rating:
Summary: History and Desire
Review: Karen Armstong would like to believe in the Prophet Mohammad, not because of his visions or poetry or even his special relationship to God, but because of his ability to create a just and peaceful society out of the chaotic tribalism of sixth century Arabia. She also wants to believe that Islam is at least as much social experiment--in equality, compassion, and surrender to God--as it is doctrines or rituals. For Muslims, Armstrong writes, "salvation does not mean redemption from sin, but the creation of a just society." That's a long way from hanging the burned body parts of Americans on public bridges, but that's exactly why this book should be on every American voter's reading list. It's not so much to find out the objective facts of Islam (though therre are plenty of those), but to understand the religion's deepest yearnings and view of the world. If you've bought into the American party line on Islam, the last 40 pages of this book are going to be hard to swallow--Armstrong's litany of Western imperialism and meddling are unflinching and humbling. Violent Islamicists also come in for their own share of criticism. Alarmed by the failure of Western materialism to satisfy spiritual needs, Armstrong fears that Islam will fail in its calling to a just society. The broad premise of this calling--that religion might provide for a just society--is the possibility Armstong is most interested in, the desire that makes sense of past and present. Muslims carry this sense and desire into every part of their lives. It may not be important for us to do the same, but refusing to recognize its grip on Muslim hearts and minds is where the battle of Falujah really began.
Rating:
Summary: I've read several of Karen's books..............
Review: and I started to read all the reviews here. That was until I got to stunning-reversal.com's stupid remarks, but, then, what would you expect from someone from San Francisco?
Ms Armstrong has spent a good deal of time "whitewashing" Islam. I get tired of hearing statements like "Islam is the most misunderstood religion in the world." No! No, it's not, Ms Armstrong. We pretty much understand all that we see. But, what you would expect us NOT to understand is the bloody spread of Islam by the sword, which you gloss over. You also gloss over the invasion of Europe by the Muslims. But, worse than that, you and your compatriots write glowing reports of the dynasties in Europe, while forgetting that they shouldn't have been there at all. If it hadn't been for Charles Martel at the "Battle of Tours", when Muslims tried to conquer all of Europe, Europe would be Muslim today. This was long BEFORE the Crusades, Ms. Armstrong. Indeed, Islam was spread by the sword. I hope you wake up and tell the truth some day.
Rating:
Summary: A shameful exercise in political correctness
Review: From her romanticized portrayal of the rise to power of the Prophet Mohammed through to what amounts to a virtual apologia for Islamic imperialism throughout the Middle Ages, Karen Armstrong's Islam can not be taken seriously as a valid work of historical scholarship. Armstrong's purpose in writing Islam is clear, it is not to provide a clear and objective rendering of the facts, but is instead an attempt to offer an 'antidote to prejudice' as the cover review attests. Because of this key issues relating to the understanding of Islamic history, and consequently an understanding of contemporary Islamic issues, are lost due to Armstrong's willingness to gloss over any uncomfortable areas that do not fit her agenda. Where such facts are undeniable, such as Mohammed's massacre of the Qurayzah (a neighbouring Jewish tribe in Arabia), Armstrong urges her readers not to judge his actions by modern standards stressing that we are dealing with a 'very primitive society' where such behaviour was to be expected. This seems a sensible policy to adopt; indeed it is extremely anachronistic to apply one's own values to those of previous societies. However when it comes to dealing with the Christian crusades Armstrong has no qualms in condemning them as an 'aggressive Western intrusion' and describing them as 'disgraceful' events neglecting to see them as a direct response to aggressive Islamic imperial intrusion into European territory. Armstrong's work adds nothing to a Western reader's attempt to form an understanding of Islam, and amounts to little more than a whitewashing of events. Readers would do far better to read Professor Bernard Lewis's books on similar themes which provide an impartial and concise view of Islamic history and society.
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