The Fate of Abraham: Why the West is Wrong about Islam
Author: Peter Osborne
Publisher: Simon & Schuster, London
Pages: 514
Price: Rs 1,772
The term “Islam” in popular usage conflates the faith with its billion-strong followers, shapes them as a monochrome collective, and ascribes several characteristics that the entire community is believed to share: backwardness, fanaticism and, above all, violence.
There is much to confirm this view – mistreatment of women and abuse of human rights in Wahhabi Saudi Arabia and by the Taliban; the wanton violence of Al Qaeda and the Islamic State; the savage 9/11 assaults on the US, and the all-too-frequent attacks