We all enjoyed "Snow", and it seems a good idea to get some gen on Islam. So the next book will be Islam: A Short History by Karen Armstrong.And in the absence of James this time, we're meeting at Mark's, on 17 April.
I don't know if this is relevant to this book, but I like her take on fundamentalism. Most people believe that Islamic fundamentalists, and US Bible Belters alike are throwbacks to a mediaeval viewpoint. She thinks it's the opposite: fundamentalists are actually very "modern", in that they have a "practical" understanding of the truth of scripture, instead of the "mythical" understanding people once had (And that might be all we need to calmly tell Dawkins to settle down and relax).
As Wikipedia puts it:
Central to her reading of history is the notion that premodern cultures possessed two complementary and indispensable ways of thinking, speaking and knowing: mythos and logos. Mythos was concerned with meaning; it "provided people with a context that made sense of their day-to-day lives; it directed their attention to the eternal and the universal." Logos, on the other hand, dealt with practical matters. It forged ahead, elaborating on old insights, mastering the environment, and creating fresh and new things. Armstrong argues that modern Western society has lost the sense of mythos and enshrined logos as its foundation. Mythical narratives and the rituals and meanings attached to them have ceded authority to that which is rational, pragmatic and scientific - but which does not assuage human pain or sorrow, and cannot answer questions about the ultimate value of human life. However, far from embarking on a wholesale rejection of the modern emphasis in favour of the old balance, the author contends, religious fundamentalists unwittingly turn the mythos of their faith into logos. Fundamentalism is a child of modernity, and fundamentalists are fundamentally modern.
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