Friday, March 30, 2007

Islam - The Straight Path

Edited by Kenneth W. Morgan

A couple words of warning about this book. First, it is pretty dated since in was written in 1958. Second it is not an unbiased or impartial book about Islam since it was written entirely by Islamics.

That being said, it is still a very informative book about the history and the spread of Islam. The statistics are probably quite a bit off since they are fifty years out of date. One problem I had with the book was the use of the Islamic dating system, which starts from the year Mohammad moved from Mecca to Medina, so it about 600 years behind the dating system used in the West. In most instances, the western date is included, but at times it is not.

The book is a series of chapters written by different experts and it discusses the history of Islam, its beliefs and its laws (briefly), the different sects, such as Shia, Sunni and Sufi and the history of the spread of Islam throughout others parts of the world, including Africa, India, China, Europe, Turkey and the Far East.

This book is available to read online at Religion Online.


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