Ida Glaser - Thinking Biblically about Islam: Genesis, Transfiguration, Transformation

Dr Ida Glaser and Hannah Kay, scholars of both the Quran and the Bible, have expressed their thoughts in their new book Thinking Biblically about Islam: Genesis, Transfiguration, Transformation comprehensively and coherently. Readers of both faiths will find it amazingly relevant. It is a superb and deeply theological analysis of the Bible and the Quran. This book looks at some of the main themes of the Bible and the Quran in a deeper sense. So it will be useful both in the academic arena and also for general readers. The book reminds us how essential it is to explore and know the other faith and I hope it will help build bridges between people of different faiths. The writers aim is clearly not to create confrontation but to promote dialogue about admitted truth between the followers of the two faiths. Thus I believe that this book will also surely help Muslim Background Believers in Bangladesh and beyond.

Anwar Al-Azad

Vice-Principal, Institute for Classical Languages, Dhaka, Bangladesh

This is an extraordinary book. It is not an introduction to Islam, still less a how to manual on Christian-Muslim dialogue, or instruction on how Christians might share their faith with Muslims though the authors could teach us quite a bit about all three of these topics. Rather, this book looks squarely at how Muslims, in all their remarkable diversity, look at a wide variety of things events or stances or people that are treated both in the Quran and in the Bible (e.g. creation, fall, Moses, Elijah, Jesus, the cross), law (shariah), people of God (ummah), the nature of holy books (Quran, Bible), and more and ask how Christians should think about all these matters if they carefully study them out of the framework of the Christian Bible. What is characteristic of this study is its zeal to get things right, to be truthful and accurate. Highly recommended.

D. A. Carson

Research Professor of New Testament, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, IL, USA

Here is a very fresh and original way of helping Christians to engage with Muslims and Islam. Approaching the Bible with all the disturbing questions raised by the study of the Quran and of Islam, Ida Glaser and Hannah Kay come up with refreshingly new ways of understanding familiar biblical themes and texts. Because they have taken the trouble to understand how Muslims interpret the Quran, and because they also appreciate rabbinic interpretation of the Old Testament, they are able to recognise where there is genuine common ground between Christian and Islamic beliefs and where there are really significant and crucial differences. They have a remarkable lightness of touch which enables them to explain quite difficult ideas very simply but without over-simplification. While readers therefore will appreciate the thorough academic study which undergirds this book, they wont be able to escape the personal challenges which are presented on every page about how Christians should think about Muslims and Islam.

Colin Chapman

Formerly lecturer in Islamic Studies at the Near East School of Theology, Beirut, and visiting lecturer at the Arab Baptist Theological Seminary, Beirut, Lebanon

Thinking Biblically about Islam is an outstanding book. Ida Glaser is a uniquely qualified author academically, spiritually and personally. Drawing on decades of first-hand experience with several Muslim cultures as well as on thorough academic knowledge of both the Bible and the Quran, she invites the reader to think seriously about Islam in light of Christian Scriptures. What makes her book special is not only her academic and professional competence but her exceptional humility, honesty and grace in dealing with extremely difficult and sensitive issues. Her book offers no simplistic solutions to complex problems, nor easy answers to tough questions. She takes the reader through an adventure of learning step by step to think anew in a Christ-like way about Islam and Muslims, offering rich resources of prayerful reflection and personal experience. It is the rare combination of academic excellence and spiritual sensitivity that gives her book such a unique quality. In a time of reductionist slogans about Islam, be they motivated by panic and fear, or naivet and ignorance, a book like Thinking Biblically about Islam is a more than welcome invitation to godly wisdom, loving concern and informed balance, so urgently needed in the contemporary troubled world.

Pavel Hosek

Head of Religious Studies Department

Protestant Theological Faculty, Charles University, Prague

I am thrilled to see this solidly evangelical book which encourages us to think about Islam through the eyes of God and to listen to Him (Luke 9:35). This book has deepened my own Christian belief through this process too. Thinking Biblically about Islam is an excellent resource for any Christian to think and understand Islam from different points of view. I specially recommend it for ministers and lay people who work with Muslims or have Muslim background Christians in their congregations.

Mohammad Reza Eghtedarian

Curate for Liverpool Cathedral and Sepas

Thinking Biblically about Islam, is opportune, rigorous and challenging.

It is a very timely contribution to todays world. As worldwide events prompt a cacophony of competing voices and assertions about Islam and Muslims, more urgently than ever we need to be able to respond biblically and this book shows us a way to do so. Rather than raucously competing opinions, it is a delight to encounter so many voices brought in conversation in one book. We hear the authors voices clearly, as well as Muslim voices: and the readers own voice and experience is constantly invited into the discussion through the questions in each part.

With characteristic rigor, the authors read the Bible and Quran with detailed attention to the background and structure of the texts. The book exemplifies the reminder that authentic interpretation has to take account of the worlds behind the text, of the text and in front of the text. The event and characters of the transfiguration are a central theme to examine what the Bible and the Quran say about God and people.

To read this book is to be challenged to listen better to ourselves, to others, and particularly to the Bible and what it calls us to in living obediently as Gods people. It is accessible to people with little background in Islam. At the same time it will stimulate those with more experience to think anew about biblical texts and their implications for how we live and relate to Muslims in the world today.

I highly recommend it to church leaders, Bible teachers and all Christians engaged with Muslim (and other religious) communities.

Moyra Dale

Adjunct Research Fellow, Melbourne School of Theology

Thinking Biblically about Islam is one of the most exhaustive and thorough works I have seen on the subject of the gospel in church and culture. It reminds all who proclaim Jesus as Lord of the central theme of his teaching. The authors have suggested that thinking biblically strengthens acting biblically. Christians around the world must allow what they love and cherish to guide their actions, and not their hates and/or fears. This book gives a historical and theological understanding of Islam from its modest beginning in the Arabian Peninsula. The spread of Islam to other parts of the world with its eventual encounter with the rich heritage of the Judeo-Christian faith is captured in the book. These understandings break the barrier that has hitherto excluded peaceful co-existence and even more importantly sharing the gospel message in our societies. It calls on true believers in Christ to think biblically about Islam and about all of life. An extraordinary work highly recommended!