CHRISTIANS, MUSLIMS, & JESUS
Mona Siddiqui

I wasn't surprised that I loved this book, but I read books similar to this one all the time and what's surprising is that I haven't gotten sick of them yet. This one is a little more academic than most of the others I've read. Siddiqui gets deep into issues about the nature of scripture and the nature of prophecy, and what these reveal to us about the nature of God, and how all of this influences our understanding of things like law and grace and justice. She is in constant conversation with my boys Walter Brueggemann and Jurgen Moltman, as well as Muslim scholars I'm tentatively familiar with like al-Ghazali and Muhammad Iqbal, and she pointed me towards many other thinkers and writers and poets whose work I hope to someday have time for.

Almost all of the chapters were challenging and informative and enlightening, but the conclusion, a personal and thoughtful reflection on the cross, was what I related to the most:

"I have been engaged in Christian-Muslim dialogue for many years as an ethical and intellectual imperative which has directed me to explore and understand my own Muslim faith from various perspectives. It is true that the word dialogue is laden with all kinds of contested meanings, but I use the word in a very personal capacity; for me dialogue is learning. Christian theology and its perspectives on Islamic thought have been invaluable to this journey. In my conversations with Christian colleagues, in my reading of Christian theology, I have been fortunate enough to listen and I have learnt in greater depth how to talk of God."

"God is God and no amount of poetical or philosophical language can exhaust any definition of him."

other books I read this month:
THE TWILIGHT CHILDREN - Gilbert Hernandez & Darwyn Cooke