The Challenge of Islam

Written by a New Zealand philosopher, this book is a timely contribution to interfaith dialogue. It falls into three parts which deal with understanding Islam in historical, scriptural, social and legal terms; then the context of Christian-Muslim encounters as well as Jewish-Muslim relations, leading to a discussion of real engagement through dialogue. Of special interest is a chapter on barriers to dialogue that covers the shaping of media images relating to Islam. Much of this is predictable but the author does not mention the covert ways in which media images are shaped, for instance the image of an Arab woman rejoicing at 9/11 - when it turned out that she was in fact enthusing about something quite different and only discovered this sleight of hand a few days later. We must beware of the manufacturing of images.