BOOKS: Not Just for Idiots and Dummies

I've never been a big fan of The Complete Idiot's Guide series, nor the Dummies books, but this changed recently. The following statement by Sidi Hamza Yusuf Hanson initiated this change:

I would certainly recommend some of the decent books that have come out—even The Complete Idiot's Guide to Understanding Islam and The Dummies Guide [sic] are excellent works that have come out. Silly names but they are actually very good material. I looked at both of those books because I wanted to just make sure the information was accurate and I actually benefited from them, and I’ve been studying for twenty-five years. They’re good books and they are well organized and they are easily available. I saw a woman on an airplane the other day reading The Idiot’s Guide to Islam [sic] and I asked her, why are you reading this? She said, well I just feel like there is so much in the news and I really want to understand this better because I feel there is a lot of misunderstanding and lack of communication. That is the hallmark of intelligent people. I would call it The Intelligent's Guide to Islam instead of The Idiot’s Guide. [laughter] It’s the idiots that don’t bother to actually find out about the world that they live in and what other people think and feel.

A few days after hearing these remarks, I flipped through several of these books at a local bookstore. Having done that, I have to agree with Sidi Hamza's assessment that, in spite of their titles, these are very useful books for presenting Islam. Not only were the two books on Islam helpful, but I found the The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Koran and The Koran for Dummies quite informative as well. All of these books turned out to be far above my expectations, even after Hamza Yusuf's endorsement. Overall, both of The Complete Idiot's Guides appealed to me more than the Dummies books, but that's just my personal preference and subjective opinion. I especially liked The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Koran, since it not only covered the subject well but had some refreshingly intelligent things to say about the Koran and its relationship with previous scriptures. I was definitely pleasantly surprised.

I recommend donating a copy or two of each of these books to your local library if they don't already carry them. Just a few minutes of sitting and flipping through these books could really overcome a lot of ignorance and misinformation—especially if in the hands of a sincere truth-seeker.

Enjoy...

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GRAMMAR NOTE: If you're wondering what [sic] in the above passage means, it's a grammatical device which is most often used in direct quotations. In short, it indicates that the passage is being quoted literally in spite of the fact that it contains an error, misspelling or is otherwise inaccurate. In the above statement by Hamza Yusuf, he didn't get both book titles exactly right, so I added [sic] to the transcript of his originally oral statement to indicate that these erroneous titles were intentionally retained. The correct title of The Dummies Guide is actually Islam for Dummies, not that this detracted from Hamza Yusuf's statement since it's obvious what he was referring to. My "Grammar Jihad" continues...