Islam Between East and West

The Author makes it very clear that this is not a book about theology. It is about “Islam as an outlook on the world” (xvii).

Where does Islam belong in the modern world?

            3 basic views of the world:

1.     The Religious (Christianity) (spirit)

2.     The Materialistic (Materialism) (matter)

3.     The Islamic (Islam) (the unity of spirit and matter) (xxv)

Part I (Chapters 1-6) PREMISES: religion in general

The first 6 chapters discuss the situation of both religion and atheism concerning man’s origin and other issues that are connected to it (Evolution, Creationism and all that follows).

Chapter 1: Creationism and Evolution

Chapter 2: Culture and Civilization

Chapter 3: The Phenomenon of Art

Chapter 4: Morality

Chapter 5: Culture and History

Chapter 6: Drama and Utopia

The author finds that there is a contradiction, that we must either choose heaven or earth. Is there a way that science, religion, art, progress, humanity, and devotion, can all be compiled into one?

Thus, the second half of this book answers this question with YES, in Islam.

Part II – Islam – Bipolar Unity

Chapter 7: Moses – Jesus – Muhammad

·      These 3 religions have taught man to perceive humanity as a whole (p.187)

·      “Christianity has never reached the full consciousness of one God” (p.194)

·      “Therefore, the Christian attack on Muhammad’s “Too human nature” is actually a misunderstanding” (p.196).

·      “Islam knows no specifically “religious” literature in the European sense of the word, just as it knows no pure secular literature. Every Islamic thinker is a theologian, just as every true Islamic movement is also a political movement” (p.196).

·      Mosque vs. Church (p.196)

·      UNITY is a unique feature of Islam (p.199)

Chapter 8: Islam and Religion

·      “Islam can be defined as a requirement to live both the physical and the spiritual life, in the external and the internal world, or, as the Qur’an puts it, to live an internal life “without forgetting one’s part in the temporal world” (p.227).

·      Thus, all (or most) people are potential Muslims (p.227)

·      “Man is the most obvious argument of Islam” (p.228).

·      P.233 Islam’s view on history: “We have power over nature, and over history as well, if we have power over ourselves.”

The rest of the book simply compares the East and the West (obviously), and so I think that this information above can help with just the overall view of Christianity from an Islamic perspective, even if not in India.