Strong Stuff

4 Ramadhan, 1445

Gosh, Gai Eaton really doesn't take any prisoners in his highly punctilious Islam and the Destiny of Man. It makes for bracing reading in the Holy Month, as a reminder that sometimes achieving holiness/wholeness requires a distinct toughness of mind & spirit. When I first read his exploration of what it is to be a Muslim some twenty years ago, in the early years of my own intense encounter with the faith, I spent a good deal of time nodding in recognition at the clarity of particular insights which seemed a good deal clearer than my own happily muddied thinking. And the same is true today.

Except that I now find myself nodding over entire chapters which seem remarkably prescient as we negotiate the ups and downs of the twenty-first century. The first chapter, Islam and Europe, manages in just a few pages to encapsulate a way of looking at European history that helps explain Western civilisation's encounter(s) with an Other with which it has been unable to come to terms for the best part of a millennium. Once you become aware of the long view the deficiencies of a secular view of history appear so obvious as to almost painful in their naivety. 

Of course, we're talking generalisations here. Big ones. But hugely illuminating.