What is Islam?
Whenever I teach on Islam, I invariably get asked questions that begin like this: "What would a Muslim think about...?" My standard response is another question: "Which Muslim?" Imagine someone asking a parallel question: "What would a Christian think about such-and-such?" Well, what kind of Christian? A conservative Presbyterian or Southern Baptist? A liberal Methodist? A Pentecostal? A Coptic? A member of an Acts 29 church plant in Seattle or a fundamentalist Baptist church in the Deep South? A pastor, a scholar, or a layman? An American, a Norwegian, a Ukrainian, a Syrian, a Rwandan, or a Malaysian? I'm sure you see the point. In reality, there's as much diversity in the Muslim world as there is in the Christian world. Just as we wouldn't want non-Christians to pigeonhole us with a "one size fits all" view of Christianity, we should acknowledge and respond appropriately to the plurality of perspectives, traditions, and practices...