Karen Armstrong
Books by Karen Armstrong
“There are countless books on Islam but Armstrong’s is Islam 101. It is accessible and provocative, and provides plenty of food for thought for the Western reader. Karen Armstrong is unique as a historian of religion. She’s a religious historian—pious herself—and she takes religion very seriously.” Read more...
The best books on The Middle East
Fawaz A. Gerges, International Relation
The Case for God
by Karen Armstrong
She says God is not an intellectual experience. But it is a human experience, to do with consciousness, an experience of being, not of having. She talks about the attempts of all the various religions to claim God for their own culture and often for their own gender: God is often phallocentric, and very elitist, and often rather elderly. And that is a grabbing hold of and a claiming of something that is only knowable through complete humility and not through acquiring, but rather letting go.
Interviews where books by Karen Armstrong were recommended
The best books on How To Be Happy, recommended by Anthony Seldon
The contemporary historian and educationalist Antony Seldon discusses his selection of books on how to be happy.
The best books on The Middle East, recommended by Fawaz A. Gerges
The Middle East has been and still is much misunderstood. Here Fawaz A. Gerges, a professor and Middle Eastern specialist at London School of Economics, recommends five pioneering works of history and social science that will help you to understand the evolution of the region’s society and politics.
