From the Spread of Islam to Contemporary views of Muslim people

In this week's readings, we first encountered a general history of the spread of the Islamic faith from Ayoub, and then an examination of Islam as a part of the contemporary world by Ernst. Ayoub's article covers big historical points about the rise of Islam as well as the on going turmoil between Christian-Islam relationship. This is important because it paints a picture of the relationship that Christians had with Muslims from the outbreak of the religion's rise to power in the region. It is also useful with the Ernst article, because together we see the progressive change of attitudes between the two religious groups. In more contemporary times, as pointed out in Ernst's article, we see that what used to be Muslims vs. Christians, now becomes Islam vs. the West. Ernst brings to the light the problem with generalizing Muslims as an entire religious group targeted as the enemy of the West. I find this article to be completely provocative because he, as a nonMuslim, is trying to convince readers that Islam is human, and not a combination of the fundamentalist acts of aggression through terrorism.

An interesting fact that we learned in class about this article is that the editors found it to be 'apologetic for terrorism' even though Ernst was not in fact a Muslim himself. He told them that he is not a Muslim but just a scholar studying them, trying to make people avoid prejudice when studying Islam. The more we talked about this article in class, the more I think I will pick up the rest of this book and read it. I am very interested to know what else Ernst has to say, as he seems like a very fascinating individual who has a passion for exposing the truth and innocence about Islam.