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Islam in our back yard – a
novel argument.
Author: Tony Payne
Published by Good Book Co. PP134. £7.00
Review by Jim Sayers
September 11th left all of us asking the most searching questions
about Islam, a religion of which we are largely ignorant and afraid.
I’ve been trying to find a readable and engaging book on the subject
for some time, and here it is!
Tony Payne starts by telling how he, and his (fictitious)
neighbour Michael in their Sydney suburb, reacted to the news on
September 11th as, like most of us, they woke up and chatted over
the back fence. From that conversation begins a dialogue, with Tony
writing a series of papers on what Muslims believe, which he and
Michael then discuss, sitting on the back deck of Michael’s house
while his toddler son Dylan digs up the lawn.
The papers cover the origins of Islam, explaining the crucial
difference between Muhammad’s Mecca and Medina writings, the two
streams of Shi’ite and Suni Islam, and the roots of Islamic
militancy. You might be surprised to find a paper on church and
state comes next, but this is crucial to understanding why Islam
sees the world so differently. The secular west believes in the
‘privatisation’ of religion separate from the state, but Islam makes
no such distinction. It will not allow the secular west to keep
religion pushed ‘upstairs’ into the unknowable and supposedly
irrational. Muslims see the state as an instrument of spreading and
establishing Islam. It is this collision between Islam and
secularism that raises other questions: what do we believe in the
west? Can we maintain the secular mindset that has ruled for the
last 200 years? How can we assess which truth claims are correct?
How do we respond to the claims of religion?
Tony debates these issues in some very human conversations with
Michael in the back yard. This switchback style is really helpful
for discussing the hot issues the book raises. This is a very
valuable and helpful book for any Christian to help us begin to
understand the Muslim world and the terrorist threat. It is also a
brilliant book to give to a non-Christian friend who is worried
about all religions in the current climate. I seem to hear the
familiar objection ‘religion is the cause of all wars’ almost every
week these days.
It left me realising that not only do most Christians know
nothing about Islam, but the Blair and Bush governments fail to
understand what they are dealing with, and have handled the Middle
East completely the wrong way, leaving us all in danger.
Jim Sayers |
