Throughout Allah Is Dead, we are forced to face why the West appears so effete in confronting Islam, not to mention its own pathologies. Bynum makes a number of keen observations about the situation in which we find ourselves. Our perceptions of religion, spirituality, and politics are all critiqued.
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In the political multicultural worldview, morality is represented through anti-racist and anti-religious-hatred legislation that often appear to be used or misused to attack the established culture and religion. Take, for example, the case of the Christian evangelists who were threatened for arrest for preaching from the Bible in a Muslim area in Britain.
Many people, Bynum says, fear a resurgent Christianity as much or more than they fear a resurgent Islam (p. 53). Apparently so.
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The West is hollowing itself out from the inside, confusing politics with religion, and even belief with unbelief. Atheists, not Christian students, she observes, are the most likely group on campus to believe in the paranormal (the embrace of Islam by socialists is undoubtedly another example of this confusion).
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The widespread belief that the holy book of one religion is, by virtue of being regarded as a holy book by its devotees, the equivalent of another, shows a profound dumbing-down of the intellect.
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All in all, Allah Is Dead: Why Islam is not a Religion is a complex and challenging book, but one that tackles the crisis of the West and the Westward push of Islam thoughtfully and seriously.
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