What Abu Daoud is reading, and Blogging

Hi All,

Just have not run across much material for the blog lately. Don't get me wrong, I read and write massive amounts, but blogging doesn't communicate some things well. For example, I'm reading Qur'anic Studies by John Wansbrough. It is petty amazing, but extraordinarily dense. And to copy a two or three sentence clip from it would require a page or two of background.

I also just recently completed the venerable conversion narrative of Bilquis Sheikh, I Dared to Call Him Father. Nowadays you can find conversion narrative books easily, but she converted in Pakistan in the 70's, so really just at the beginning of the growth of Islamic Christianity. A short book, inspiring, Catholics will like the role of the doctor-nun who tells a searching Bilquis to pray to God like she would talk to her father--hence the name of the book.

Am trudging also through Yusuf Al Qaradawi's The Lawful and the Prohibited in Islam. Al Qaradawi was at Al Azhar, but I'm not sure what he's up to these days. Anyway, this is summa of what the name says. For example: if you find an animal which has fallen into a well and you can't cut it's throat to kill it, can you stab it in the rump and eat it? (Answer: yes.) Also, food given to Muslims by Christians and Jews is hallal, unless it is known that it was dedicated to someone other than God.

To round off the list, am also done with Secret Believers by Brother Andrew and Al Janssen. Not an academic book, but does a good job of giving examples of how complex mission in an Islamic context can be. Also, they don't romanticize much: two of the first converts get killed near the end of the book. One young Christian girl is kidnapped, forced to convert, forced to marry, made a slave....and so on. An easy read.