This easy-to-read volume of essays, each originally published in the journal of Catholic culture, Annals Australasia, is an important caveat to the simplistic notion that Islam is a religion of peace and that Islamist terrorists are not ‘true Muslims’. For more than half a century, the author, a priest, has been a close student of Islam and the cultures of the Middle East, and has published translations of Arab history plus monographs on Middle Arabic.