Reading Response Chapters 11-13

In chapters 11 through 13 of "One City, Three Faiths, Armstrong introduces to us a new player in the religious and spiritual battle of Jerusalem. We introduce and incorporate Islam, a very widely practiced religion world wide today. Christianity, Judaism, and Islam still to this day battle for control over people and territory in Israel. I learned a lot about the origins of Islam which personally I can admit to not being very knowledgeable about previous to reading these chapters of Karen Armstrong's book. she expressed an integral meaning when Muhammad wanted to not necessarily unify the religions but create one out of them that combined all beliefs. As of course you could imagine, strong believers of Christianity and Judaism were discontent with this. I will try my hardest not to generalize the views of the American Public, but there are many individuals domestically that have given stereotypes to all people of Middle Eastern decent because of the 9/11 incident. My heart goes out to the victims of the attack. This is not to say by any means though that the majority of attackers on the Trade center were not Middle Eastern, because that would be a lie, majority of them were Saudi Arabian. The reason I mention this is because most of the extremist Christian groups claimed that Islam right after the event was a "deadly religion," which is completely false. In the earliest days of the creation of Islam, it seems that people were forced to cooperate with one another and give faith to the weak and not initially help them off the bat, but give them something to believe in, a faith and small amounts of supplies to help get their lives on track. These groups and people domestically here in America that watch media and movies showing believers of Islam blowing themselves up for Allah do not see the whole picture. This is the equivalent of the Christian and even Amish extremist groups of the 1800's that would battle for their land in the west during the early days of pioneering the new United States undiscovered territory and claim it in the name of "God."
This conflict can be difficult for me to fully understand, but I like the fact that Armstrong constantly uses ancient and modern examples to make a connection between the old world and the new. The entire idea of living together as part of the Islam faith came as an immediate shocker to me just because of the media and how much influence in modern American politics it holds over uneducated citizens and voters.