Connections Quarterly Winter 2018 - World Religions | Page 26

L I TERAT URE IN RE VIE W
Continued from page 23
The bulk of the book, however, is a topical exegesis of the Qur’an, which Wills agrees “is not at
first a gripping read.” By focusing each chapter on a separate theme and collecting the relevant
texts, Wills engages us as no unguided reading of the Qur’an might. Although he spends time
on the cosmology and imagery of the Qur’an, he is mainly concerned with the guidance it of-
fers to believers regarding what God asks of them. His principle goals are to show that Islam
in the Qur’an is a religion of peace, open to other faiths, and in its roots often less doctrinaire
and rigid than most of its Abrahamic peers. (The book is clearly addressed to an American, es-
sentially Judeo-Christian audience.)
Much that Wills discusses should be familiar; unfortunately it is not: the explanation of “shariah,”
which “occurs only once in the Qur’an, and does not mean ‘law’.” He draws a simple analogy: “If a
foreign country were to ban Christian law, what law would that mean? Or how would one ban
Jewish law?” (His reductio ad absurdam examples range from the 39 Articles to Deuteronomy.)
He explains that there are seven branches of Islamic law, and that in historic terms, Islam, which
required flogging for adultery unless the perpetrators repent, was less harsh than that of the
Torah, which mandated stoning. Likewise, jihad, which he says is equivalent to the English “zeal”
in its meaning of “striving,” has no violent connotations. Again, he reminds his readers that there
is no word for “holy war” in the Qur’an.
Because it is such a hot issue, Wills devotes three full chapters to the status of women, not-
ing again that Muslim women had more legal rights from the beginning than most Western
women did until very recent generations. Women, for example, retained their dowries, could
inherit a portion of a family estate, and could divorce their husbands. The Qur’an never men-
tions veiling, and its injunctions regarding women are aimed specifically at how Muhammad’s
wives should be respected.
“His most important
point is that the Qur’an
envisions peaceful
coexistence among the
Abrahamic faiths...”
It would be tedious to review all these arguments, espe-
cially since Wills does a better job than a reviewer might.
His most important point is that the Qur’an envisions
peaceful coexistence among the Abrahamic faiths: “It is
clear that Muhammad’s revelations were meant to lay a
basis for peaceful relations between the followers of To-
rah, Gospel, and Qur’an. Any Muslim developments that
deny or cancel these foundations are Islamic heresies.”
The second work, Letters to a Young Muslim, is indeed a different story. Its author is a modern
Muslim, the UAE ambassador to France, his audience is his own teenage son and others like
him, and his purpose is to contrast a rich Islamic faith with the propaganda the boys are no
doubt encountering on social media and in the real world.
Page 24 Winter 2018

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