While I'm no historian, I know enough about history to spot a con job when I see one. The folks who publish the Idiot's series must never, ever, insult the intelligence of their reading audience! Religion, by its very nature, is an extremely controversial topic. Regardless, one must never sugar coat the bad at the expense of the truth!
For example, I was truly disgusted by the author's obvious sympathy with the Taliban's belief system. First, the Taliban did not represent the vast majority of the Afghani people. As a result, they had no right to destroy the ancient statues of Buddha located in the Bamiyan Valley, period! It doesn't make the statues less important because the depraved British used them for target practice during their attempted invasion in the 19th century. Or, that they were restored in the 1950's at the request of the King of Afghanistan. The author states, from a strictly religious point of view, since no one was worshipping the statues because there have been no Buddhists living in Afganistan for the past 1000 years, there was nothing wrong in destroying them. According to the author, religious law only allows for the destruction of idols NO longer worshipped. While this restraint is certainly true in some cases, as the 1000 year Muslim occupation of India proved, it was definitely not the situation under the Taliban. Where book burning was plentiful, and the destruction of any artwork, whatsoever, showing the face of a person, was eagerly persued by these religious zealots.
Since the author brings up plenty of history. Lets talk about the huge amounts of violence by Muslims against peoples of all other religions. How can there not be? Conquering one nation after another, in the name of God, or any other reason, for that matter, leads to violence beyond the human imagination. For example, Muslim zeal almost wiped one of the world's great religions off the face of the earth! Anyone hear of Zoroastrianism, lately? The author mentions a "treaty" by Muslims to protect their shrines. Too bad the "treaty" was broken, the teachings of Zoroaster have a lot to offer the world.
The author does a great diservice to his readers by downplaying the negative aspects of Muslim history. The Muslim people have been as often the oppressors as the oppressed. While the world rejoices that the Muslim rulers had the wisdom not destroy Hindu religious idols during their 1,000 year rule of India, or the ancient treasures of pharonic Egypt after their conquest of Christian Egypt, it wasn't their's to destroy in the first place!
If one is going to tell a story, tell the whole story, not just one side. Human beings of all faiths can learn from the many mistakes made in the name of God, if the truth be told honestly!
This book was the most unbelievable piece of illogical and erroneous material that I have read. It was obviously written by someone that had a western influence and not a purely muslim or an eastern perspective. I thought the idiot referred to those that knew little about the subject, I didn't realize that it was written by an "Idiot." I have studied and read much on the subject of Islam as well as reading hadiths and the Koran and speaking with "real" Muslims; their message is much different than this book. I have read several other Idiot guides but in fields that I am not as studied, and so now I question how accuate those are?
