For busy pastors who want to get better educated about Islamist extremism, Martin Amis’s 2008 book, The Second Plane, September 11: 2001-2007 (Jonathan Cape, 208 pages), is most helpful.
It is a collection of 14 pieces, two short stories and 12 essays and reviews. Mr Amis, who describes himself as an agnostic, is a gifted teacher. He provides useful facts about the rise of Islamist extremism in the 20th century in the course of his stimulating and lively discourses.
Terror and Boredom: The Dependent Mind, originally published in The Observer in 2006, is particularly useful for frontline clergy who want to be able to answer people’s questions about Islamism and the mentality underlying it. It cannot of course substitute for a pastor’s own thinking and theological reflection but it is a useful mental pump-primer
I would hope a pastor would not be too busy to know the difference between Christianity and Islam.
Busyness is always a question of priorities. So; what’s the best read on Islam? Kenneth Cragg or Michael Nazir-Ali? Or Martin Amis? Personally, the most helpful I’ve encountered in a long while was published last year by Zondervan: Nabeel Qureshi, [i]Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus: A Devout Muslim Encounters Christianity[/i]. He is painstakingly honest about his family struggles on account of his parents’ obvious deep devotion. He is also painstaking about educating ‘the ordinary reader’ about what Islamic devotion looks like for the average Muslim believer. He covers the ground easily and in a fresh way that neither a Cragg or a Nazir-Ali quite achieves for “the busy pastorâ€!
Yet the bottom-line is the story of his Christian friend who quite simply loved him into the kingdom of Jesus, Son of the Father, painstakingly hanging in there with all sorts of questions, answered or too difficult to answer. His Trinitarian ‘solution’, told in ch.33, pages 193-6, is a classic! But of course such friendships might not be possible if folk are too “busy†…