Rating: 
Summary: Quakers in a hurry.
Review: The core of this book is a competent, moderately well-written (but never eloquent) account of the central events, figures and movements of Islamic history. Take the word "short" in the subtitle seriously, rather than by analogy to H. G. Well's infamously long "Outline of History." The book is 180 scrawny pages. Despite the length, or lack thereof, and the vast history it presumes to abbreviate, Armstrong does seem to manage to cover the most critical happenings in a concise manner. The main stylistic problem I found was that the book tends to become top-heavy with names and Arabic words. Armstrong introduces terms, then uses them on another page, maybe three in a sentence. In the early going you begin to wonder if, by the end, the whole book won't be in Arabic. Several readers have commented on Armstrong's agenda. She wants to prove that Islam is not inherently uncivilized or dangerous. Every religion allows for a variety of interpretations, and the best way to read Islam is in terms of the brotherly, open lifestyles that she proves Mohammed and his early followers followed. Actually, she doesn't prove this, or anything else, not having room for serious argument in this "short history." She claims it. We're apparently supposed to deduce that she knows what she's talking about from the fact that she's famous, and that there are a lot of references in the back of the book. (We're left to find out for ourselves that not all of them agree with her thesis.) If one could parody the message of the book as, "Islam is Quakerism in a hurry," then one can summarize her style by saying Armstrong is a "historian in a hurry." (...) Armstrong argues that the pernicious idea that Islam is a religion of war, is based on a "stereotypical and distorted image of Islam" that is actually a reflexion of Western vice. "It was when Christians instigated a series of brutal holy wars against the Muslim world that Islam was described as an inherently violent and intolerent faith." Oddly, however, it was also described that way before the Crusades -- which is why the Crusades were launched in the first place, in frank imitation of Muslim Jihad. (See Pope Urban's speech in The First Crusade, edited by Edward Peters.) Is Armstrong suggesting, as some mystical fans of quantum physics have, that sometimes result precedes cause?
At times Armstrong's selection of facts and interpretation of them borders on overt dishonesty. Many of the evils she puts down to later imperialists -- such as making it a capital offense to criticize Mohammed -- were in fact initiated by the prophet himself. Armstrong should have known that if she read the books she recommends in her bibliography. (See, in particular, Rodinson's Mohammed.) While Armstrong's post-hoc, self-indulgent arguments verge on the inane at times, fortunately most of the book is straight history. (Though sometimes even there Armstrong oversimplifies terribly.) You might find it useful, as an outline, if you supplement it with a books that cover specific aspects of Islamic history in more depth and honesty. A few I'd recommend are Jihad, by Paul Fregosi, (really amazing), the Crusades Through Arab Eyes, (for the Muslim side), and God of Battles: Holy Wars of Christianity and Islam. There's a interesting chapter in the Oxford History of Islam on Islam in subSaharan Africa, though even more than Armstrong, the authors of that book tend to look the other way when Muslims are doing things that would reinforce the alleged "stereotypes." I'd also like to find a good history of Islam in India, if anyone has any recommendations. author, Jesus and the Religions of Man
Rating: 
Summary: 1400 years of politics as a sacrament in 200 pages or less
Review: This is a knowledgeable, accessible, well-crafted introduction to the history of Islamic societies. "Politics was, therefore, what Christians would call a sacrament; it was the arena in which Muslims experienced God and which enabled the divine to function effectively in the world. Consequently, the historical trials and tribulations of the Muslim community... were of the essence of Islamic vision." So says Armstrong in her preface, introducing the most distinctive of the themes running through her 186 page narrative of Islamic history. She excels in accessible insights of comparative religion and society. Though there are occasional political and economic errors, those are peripheral areas of her story. The book is academically well grounded (for instance, drawing on Marshall Hodgson, Ira Lapidus, and Bernard Lewis on Islamic history). The insights are welcome complements to and syntheses of existing works on Islamic history as well as the Prophet Muhammad, philosophy and theology, mysticism and spirituality, modernity, fundamentalism, and Western perceptions of Islam. She hopes ultimately to facilitate the cultivation of a more accurate appreciation of Islam in the West. She's made a good effort at it. The author emphasizes the inclusive aspect of Islam, that all rightly guided religion that submitted wholly to God came from the same divine source. She also dwells on tawhid (the unity of the holiness of life) and the post-Mohammed introduction of misogyny to Islam. Islam is not a coercive religion: in the first Muslim century, conversion was discouraged and indeed won permanent conquests through the Caliphate's tolerance by comparison to the previous Christian rulers. "Religious ideas and practices take took... because they are found in practice to give the faithful a sense of sacred transcendence." When Umar began encouraging conversions, the consequent loss of dhimmi (non-Muslim) poll taxes (jizyah) substantially weakened the Caliphate. Its first fitnah (Civil War) in 656-660 raised a crucial question about what kind of man should lead the Muslim ummah (community): the most pious Muslim, a descendant of the Prophet, or, in the interests of peace and unity, withdraw and accept the existing military and political order? This last question is a pertinent today as it was over 1300 years ago. A dozen pages are devoted to the esoteric movements of the Twelver and Ismaili Shii, Faylasufs, and Sufis. "Ismailis always alluded to God in the phrase 'He Whom the boldness of thought cannot contain." "[Faylasuf] rationalism was itself a kind of faith, because it takes great courage and trust to believe that the world is rationally ordered." "Sufis sought the God in the depths of their being, rather than in current events... "[Muhammad's] interior islam [surrender] that was the true foundation of the law, rather than the usul al-fiqh [Islamic jurisprudence]... the Sufis, like the Shiis, were constantly open to the possibility of new truths." "Any 'reformation,' however conservative its intention, is always a new departure, and an adaptation of the faith to the particular challenges of the reformer's own time... Islam proved that it had this creative capacity." Discrepancies between the Quranic ideal and existing polities made "Muslims... feel that their most sacred values had been violated; the political health of the ummah could touch the deepest core of their being." Those feelings about the non-ideal are not uncommon today, among Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Later she comes to Al-Ghazzali who believed there were "three sorts of people: those who accept the truths of religion without questioning them; those who try to find justification for their beliefs in the rational discipline of kalam; and the Sufis, who have a direct experience of religious truth." As an interesting aside, she says: "When Charles Martel defeated the Muslim troops at Poitiers in 732, this was not regarded by Muslims as a great disaster... Europe seemed remarkably unattractive to them: there were few opportunities for trade in that primitive backwater, little booty to be had, and the climate was terrible." Armstrong is sloppy when she says "kingship [was not] feasible in a region where numerous small groups had to compete for the same inadequate resources." More accurately, kingship was not feasible in a region with such a discontinuous distribution of resources and such modest surpluses. My largest disagreements are in the last chapter, when she gives too-early dates to the rise and eminence of the West, which until Napoleon I was the weakest major civilization. The author also misses the hostility of Western secularism to religion in Revolutionary France and elsewhere in the West. But she well describes the main issues that Islamic (and other non-Western) societies have with Modernity, and says that "fundamentalism, in all religions, is an essential part of it, existing in a symbiotic relationship with a coercive secularism." "[T]he desperation and fear that fuel fundamentalists also tend to distort the religious tradition, and accentuate its more aggressive aspects at the expense of those that preach toleration and reconciliation." I have seen a substantial literature on how the West underdevelops the non-West. There could be an equally substantial literature on how the West tyrannizes the non-West. Armstrong notes that Islamic society has, as the pre-Modern West did, executive [differential] control (via Caliph, Khan, Shah, etc.) and judicial [integral] control. It has lacked organizationally is legislative [proportional] control, which can be filled by majlis, loya jirga, shura, or other adaptation of existing bodies. That adaptation happened slowly in the West, and has been sabotaged by the West elsewhere. She cites, for instance, Algeria in 1992. When Armstrong talks about the 13th century Mongols , she could be talking about the 20th century West and holding out hope to the Islamic world. There has been widespread destruction of society; and supreme foreign power and law. "The Mongols' power had suggested new horizons. They had seemed about to conquer the world, and had been a portent of a new kind of imperialism, which linked the possibility of universal rule with mass destruction. The splendor of their states dazzled, at the same time as they undermined Muslim preconceptions. Muslims were not stunned into passivity by the horrors they had lived through, nor by the political defeat that these Mongol states represented. Islam is a resilient faith. Frequently in their history Muslims have responded positively to disaster, and used it constructively to gain fresh insights. So too after the Mongol invasions, when people clearly felt that the world as they had known it was coming to an end, but also that an entirely new (...)"
Rating:
Summary: Short, but a good start for those interested in Islam
Review: It is hard to put 15 centuries of human history into a volume this size, but for beginners it is a helpful start. Her wonderful biography of Muhammad is the next place to go, if the subject interests you. It appears some reviewers are so filled with hatred that they cannot even let a non-Muslim like Armstrong fairly describe Islam without screaming "apologist!" The reader below who equates Islam with Sept 11. and his experiences in Saudi Arabia would probably be unhappy with those who speak of Christainity in terms of abortion clinic bombers, or Judaism in terms of Meir Kahane's racism. Hate is always a sign of weakness and low self-esteem. As is evidenced by some of these reviews, hate is truly a worldwide disease that knows no religion but masks itself behind every one.
Rating: 
Summary: Terrible: excuses, bias & glossy
Review: This is a terrible book. This is not an unbiased account of the origins, history, and development of the Islamic religion. Excuses are made because of the Middle East's past and present failures at democracy, economics, and containing the massive population growth, which will add more misery to the many mostly self-induced problems the Islamic Middle East already has. There is peace in Islam, but also plenty of violence. The author makes excuses and false comparisons with Christianity and West to make up for these dark elements of the Quran. She takes the rationalization, or "excuse view" for almost every blemish in Islam's historical and theological development. What the fundamentalists believe in are contradictions to many of the teachings of the Koran: don't commit suicide, don't kill women and children etc. If you want to learn more about Islam then there are a number of other books that are better than this one. Terrible book. It seems to be written for Americans that have short attnention spans.
Rating: 
Summary: Short, Sweet Primer on the Political History of Islam
Review: In light of recent events, I picked up Armstrong's book that is currently on some "best seller" lists. Plenty of authors with backgrounds in political science and history postulate that violent clashes between Islamic and non-Islamic societies, particularly the West, are inevitable. Given Karen Armstrong's scholarly focus on religion, I was interested in gleaning insights on this topic from a different perspective. For good or for bad, Armstrong's views are clearly sympathetic to Islam. I got from the book about what one might expect from a book of 187 pages in length. I finished the book with many unanswered questions, not much greater understanding of the nuances of Islam, and the sense that this is not the one book to read about Islam if you only read one book. (Of course, there may be no such book.) However, Armstrong does provide a very concise overview of the political history and a well detailed timeline of Islam from Mohammed's first revelations in 610 A.D. to the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2000. Along the way, she touches on the ebb and tide of various Islamic empires, the split between the Sunni and Shiite movements and the germination of the fundamentalist movement. Reading this book is probably a useful step in achieving a better understanding of Islam.
Rating: 
Summary: great
Review: Excellent, if spare, language. To the point. Lots of facts. I underlined this book more than any I have read in ten years. The last 1/3 is very relevant to our times, especially the insights on fundamentalism in all religions. (...)
Rating:
Summary: From the Prophet Muhammed to the Taliban in 2000
Review: Ms. Karen Armstrong has covered an amazing amount of ground in this brief look at the history of Islam's beliefs and practices since 610 when the Prophet Muhammed's revelations began that we know today as the Quran (usually spelled Koran in English). She has supplied a generous number of maps, a detailed chronology, and constantly interprets each ruler, regime, and sect from the perspective of the Quran's text, and the practices advocated by the Prophet Muhammed. The book has an agenda, which I would describe as creating a spiritual appeal for mutual understanding among Muslims and nonMuslims, especially those of the Jewish and Christian faiths. That appeal seems based on an appreciation for similarities in the religious practices of the three religions as they were originally observed. Every deviation from those original Muslim practices is explained in the book as an error that needs to be and will probably be corrected in time. If you are like me, you will find that some of your understanding about historical Muslim beliefs is incorrect. For example, the original geographic expansion of Islam from 638-738 A.D. involved little attempt at creating converts to Islam. In fact, the Muslim forces usually were garrisoned in separate, new cities to minimize contact between them and the local people. Much of what we have heard about the doctrinal basis for religious war in Islam seems to have been developed through the successful Mongol invasion, and reactions to the secular invasion of Western culture into Muslim nations in the last few decades. One new idea that I learned from this book is that the success of all Muslims as a community in a combined political, social, and economic sense is viewed as a sign by Muslims of how well the religion is being observed. Until the arrival of oilfield riches in the Middle East in the 20th century, Islamic influence had been on the wane worldwide as the industrial West swept forward to create its colonies and continued economic dominance through advanced products and technologies. The seeking for a possible solution to this ebb of cultural success has led in part of the fundamentalism that has spawned conflicts with the United States and some other nations. I was also interested to note that in countries where Muslims are in the majority, democracy will lead to dominance by religious parties. Islam does not separate church and state the way that Western democracies usually do. Appreciating this point means a different kind of diplomacy and cooperation with Islamic democracies than will occur with multicultural, pluralistic democracies. Although I found the book to offer these kinds of insights, Ms. Armstrong would have helped me understand Islam more by sharing additional information about the religion from the primary source of the Quran and key writings of religious figures. Also, it is unusual to analyze a religion in terms of how closely it follows the original way it was observed. Few today, for example, look at the Catholic Church or any Protestant church for how closely it matches in specifics how Jesus and His disciples lived. Finally, I could probably have gotten the key points in the book without quite as much detail as was spelled out here about various leaders. With less "who did what, when, and where to whom" there would have been much more space to explain key ideas and to provide more detail about the Quran. I also wondered what misunderstandings various Muslim groups typically have about those of us who live in countries where the percentage of Muslims is relatively small. A number of other questions still came to mind after reading the book. If each person is to be treated equally in respect and in terms of economic goods in accord with the Quran, what do people in various Muslim countries think about the growing gaps between the richest and poorest Muslims? What do Muslims in various countries think about people of their same religious persuasion who live in various Western democracies? Greet all with an open mind and a welcoming heart and hand!
Rating:
Summary: Brief and informative
Review: I found the first section and the last section of the book very interesting and informative. The first section covers the Prophet's life and the beginings of the faith. The last chapeter discusses Islam in modern day society. I found the sections in the middle covering the time in between and the many different empires throughout Islamic history a bit less interesting. I recommend this book for someone who wants an introduction to the history of Islam.
Rating:
Summary: A VERY short history indeed, but a great starting point.
Review: The history is brief and breakneck, but it has an excellent bibliography and helpful appendices. It's also nicely written and easy to read. It's not quite true, as some other reviewers have suggested, that she omits any discussion of fundamentalism or the position of women. The discussions are extremely brief, but then again, in such a short book, with 1400 years and a few empires to cover, I didn't feel this was unfair.
Use it for a broad introduction and further reading guide.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent and unbiased account. A must read!
Review: An excellent account of the history of Islam. Well thought out and full of unbiased information (a rarity in western media when the subject is Islam/Muslims). A must read for those who want to understand the "Real" followers of this incredible religion and the issues of the middle east conflict.
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