\u201cI always say,\u201d Karen Armstrong admits with a conspiratorial grin, \u201cthat God bought me that place.\u201d She is referring to the north London house she paid for with the proceeds of her series of bestsellers on religion \u2014 and Islam in particular.<\/p>\n
If there was one specific book that underpinned the foundations of her Islington home, it was her short history of Islam. Published in 2000, this was perfectly timed for the west\u2019s agonising over religion and the potential for a clash of civilisations sparked by the September 11 attacks the following year.<\/p>\n
\u201cI never saw the inside of a library\u201d after that, she tells me as we are steered to our table. Instead, she was on the radio nonstop, \u201ctalking about Islam \u201d \u2014 as indeed she has been virtually ever since. She sees it as a civic duty to defend the religion \u2014 against both the misconceptions of non-Muslims and against what she sees as the corrupting influence of certain strains of Islamic theology, notably Saudi Wahhabism.<\/p>\n
It is, Armstrong says of the latter, \u201cas if a tiny sect in the [American] Bible belt had petrodollars and international approval to export their form of Christianity over the rest of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
Read it all<\/a>(subscription).<\/p>\n Karen Armstrong: \u2018Religion is a matter of imagination\u2019 https:\/\/t.co\/AMXV4nD1Hg<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Financial Times (@FT) July 19, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n