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- Ernst’s overarching claim is that Americans and Europeans do not understand or respect other cultures.
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- “Americans are not very good at understanding other cultures” (page 2)
- “The extraordinary mismatch between Euro-American ideas of Islam and the realities lived by Muslims will form a recurring theme throughout this book” (page 4).
- “Religion is not a realm of facts, but a field in which every statement is contested and all claims are challenged” (page 8).
- In the second claim listed above Ernst claims that this book will compare how Euro-Americans perceive Muslims and how Muslims actually live. It is often believed that Muslims live a very different life from Americans or Europeans but Ernst uses evidence from Marshall Hodgson to help disprove this. Hodgson says “There has not been a separate ‘The Muslim world’ for more than 200 years” (page 4). This along with many statistics are used to prove that many Muslims live alongside everyone else and do not live in their own world. Ernst continues to point out ways that Muslims live a very similar life to Americans and Europeans. I think that oftentimes when people learn about religion they then assume that everyone in that religion acts and thinks the same way. This is not the case and if people were able to better separate religion from culture then they would have a better understanding. If Ernst is able to prove the smaller claim of how Muslims really live this will help prove his overarching argument that Americans and Europeans do not understand or respect other cultures. In order to make a large claim, you must have smaller claims to back it up and this is exactly what Ernst is doing.
