?Considered essential by [those] seeking to understand Islam.?

?This book deserves to be read over and over again.?

'This is a beautifully written book. It offers a taste of theology, of history, of aesthetics and of eschatology blended in such way as to provide a whole and balanced image, a vision of life that is both comprehensive and thoroughly Islamic.'

'This book deserves to be read over and over again.'

'Considered essential by [those] seeking to understand Islam.' (Sunday Telegraph) '...a book dealing with the most vital and crucial questions now agitating our lives.' Maryam Jameelah

A new, revised edition, in paperback, of a highly successful book. Islam & the Destiny of Man is a wide-ranging study of the religion of Islam from a unique point of view. The author was brought up as an agnostic and embraced Islam at an early age after writing a book (commissioned by T. S. Eliot) on Eastern religions and their influence on Western thinkers. The aim of Islam and the Destiny of Man is to explain what it means to be a Muslim, a member of a community which embraces a quarter of the world?s population and to describe the forces which have shaped their hearts and minds. Throughout the book the author is concerned not simply with Islam in isolation, but with the very nature of religious faith, its spiritual and intellectual foundations and the light it casts upon the mysteries and paradoxes of the human condition.

A new, revised edition, in paperback, of a highly successful book. Islam & the Destiny of Man is a wide-ranging study of the religion of Islam from a unique point of view. The author was brought up as an agnostic and embraced Islam at an early age after writing a book (commissioned by T. S. Eliot) on Eastern religions and their influence on Western thinkers. The aim of Islam and the Destiny of Man is to explain what it means to be a Muslim, a member of a community which embraces a quarter of the worlds population and to describe the forces which have shaped their hearts and minds. Throughout the book the author is concerned not simply with Islam in isolation, but with the very nature of religious faith, its spiritual and intellectual foundations and the light it casts upon the mysteries and paradoxes of the human condition.

?This is a beautifully written book. It offers a taste of theology, of history, of aesthetics and of eschatology blended in such way as to provide a whole and balanced image, a vision of life that is both comprehensive and thoroughly Islamic.? Parabola

Charles Le Gai Eaton was born in Switzerland and educated at Charterhouse and at King?s College, Cambridge. He worked for many years as a teacher and journalist in Jamaica and Egypt (where he embraced Islam in 1951) before joining the British Diplomatic Service. He is now a consultant to the Islamic Cultural Centre in London. His King of the Castle was brought out in a second edition by the Islamic Texts Society in 1990.

2008-04-27 Full of riddles

I've had it with this book. I can't go any further. If it was Eaton's intention to interpret contemporary Islam from the perspective of a Western convert -- someone who is aware of the "areas of misunderstanding that can bedevil the two cultures" -- then perhaps he should have done it in plain English. Let me take a paragraph at random, e.g. p50:

"The profound bond which unites one particular religion with other God-given messages is, in fact, a clear sign of its orthodoxy in the most universal sense of this term; and unless we possess a touchstone by which to judge the orthodoxy of the religions, we have no means of passing judgement on the false prophets and vicious cults which have surfaced in this century...*but this basic orthodoxy is balanced (though never destroyed) by the differences between one set of outward forms and doctrinal formulations and another. A square and a triangle are quite different figures, but they may nonetheless be related to a single geometrical centre.*"

I have read this paragraph several times, and I am still left wondering what Eaton is trying to say in the starred sentences. Is it that it is possible to judge a religion's integrity by comparing it with others and looking for common ground? Oh no, wait -- is he saying that similar messages between religions serve as proof of their veracity? Or is it that all religions have the same message at heart? I could spend a few minutes trying to guess which explanation is best, but the trouble is that almost every paragraph contains some element of riddle.

If you read this and understood the except I gave straight-off, maybe Eaton's book is for you after all. If not, I might recommend "No god but God" by Reza Aslan, which I found much more enlightening.