Simple Utah Mormon Politics

Here are some things that, in retrospect, I wish I had known when I was a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ or Latter-day Saints.  Since my son is leaving for his mission in the next few days, I thought I'd share those ideas with him, so that he can be more successful than I was.

"Seek first to understand," goes the wise saying. Westerners, and particularly Americans, and more particularly American evangelical Christians, have done a very poor job of seeking to understand what Islam really is.  Like anything else, Islam cannot be captured in a sound bite or even a series of sound bites.  Islam is much more variegated than the average Westerner currently comprehends, and an understanding of Islam requires dozens of hours of study, along with opening one's self up to the possibility that a lot of the sound bites informing what we think we know about Islam just might be wrong. Here is a list of books that one would do better to read to get a much broader and more accurate view of the religion of Islam.