Islam: A Mosaic, Not a Monolith
Brookings Receives Top Billing in WSJ List of Essential Books on Understanding Islam
Vartan Gregorian's Islam: A Mosaic, Not a Monolith (Brookings, 2003) gets top billing in Karen Elliott House's opinion piece in the November 11, 2006 edition of The Wall Street Journal entitled "Sense of Ummah." House calls Islam "the perfect primer....simple, but not simplistic" in her listing of books essential to understanding Islam.
Upon publication, Publishers Weekly noted that "Gregorian reminds readers that it is unfair to generalize so wantonly about a religion that encompasses more than a billion people. This book is brief, but its scope is ambitious...." CHOICE called Islam "An exceptionally readable, panoramic view of the Islamic world."
Three years after publication this book hasn't waned in importance or scope. Gregorian urges Westerners to distinguish between activist Islamist parties, which promote—sometimes violently—Islam as an ideology in a theocratic state, and Islamic parties, whose traditional members want their secular political systems to co-exist with the moral principles of their religion. By doing so, he calls on us to promote international understanding, tolerance, and peace.
Comments