SOURCE: Sardar, Ziauddin. “The Agony of a 21st-Century Muslim.” New Statesman 132, no. 4625 (17 February 2003): 50-2.

In the following review, Sardar compares Islam Explained to Barnaby Rogerson's The Prophet Muhammad: A Biography and Asma Barlas's “Believing Women” in Islam: Unreading Patriarchal Interpretations of the Koran, discussing how each work portrays modern Islamic culture.

It is not easy to be a Muslim. Believers like me live on the edge, constantly having to justify our very existence. As the French Moroccan novelist Tahar Ben Jelloun discovered, the situation became infinitely worse after the events of 11 September 2001. Having watched the spectacle unfold on television, his daughter declared that she did not want to be a Muslim: “Muslims are bad; they killed a lot of people.” The loving father explained that the attacks on America were the work of “fanatics” and “crazy people”. They did not represent Islam.

But what is Islam, the children...