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Beyond beards & burqas - Connecting with Muslims

Author:	Martin Goldsmith
Published By:	IVP (Leicester)
Pages:	158
Price:	£7.99
ISBN:	978 1 84474 410 7

Reviewed by Philip Joy.

We need a book like this. Despite living and working alongside Muslims, the majority of Christians - of all ethnicities - probably have misperceptions about them, relatively few of us have Muslim friends and even fewer are comfortable dialoguing with them. Even worse, there are worrying trends in contemporary media presentations of the Islamic world. Drawing on years of personal experience Martin Goldsmith takes us past the cultural and religious stereotypes and helps equip us to connect in depth with the Muslim people we meet.

It is the mixture of anecdote with missiology that makes this writing particularly compelling. His Jewish-Christian background, as well as missionary experience, helps him to raise and answer a range of cross-cultural issues with clarity. It is his explicit intention not to write another weighty tome on Islam. Rather he presents real encounters with real Muslims from diverse cultures. Thus details of actual conversations, situations and events do more than merely lend a stamp of authority: they are the method of the book.

Goldsmith’s tales capture the imagination and remain in the mind. There is the visiting scholar who asks the direction of Mecca before beginning his midday prayers in Goldsmith’s office. There is the woman who dreams of two roads: the one she is on and the one she desires to be on, yet cannot reach. There is the vocal crowd of students whose vehement denial of Christ’s divinity is met by Goldsmith’s patient explanations. Yet none of the anecdotes have the slightest hint of self-display or that ‘cheesy-ness’ often found in Christian paperbacks. Instead they show us a way and invite us to follow.

Construction and style are helpful. The chapters adopt a cumulative approach which takes us gradually deeper into the world-view of various Islamic peoples from Sunnis to Sufis, and the ways in which our horizons can meet theirs. The questions of Jihad and Islamism are dealt with head-on. There are helpful tips, such as the best Gospel to begin with, or the importance of relating faith to social issues, or the tricky but vital necessity of explaining the Trinity. Each chapter ends with a pair of concise questions to ‘reflect’, and there is a brief reference section at the end of the book.

Goldsmith is a warm, thinking writer who communicates the warmth and thoughtfulness of peoples whom we are perhaps inclined to dismiss as too difficult to reach, or of whom we are frankly scared. I confess I didn’t know to what the word burqa referred until I read this book, let alone go beyond that knowledge. But in this and many other ways I have come away more enlightened and more confident. I think you will do the same.