In Human Struggle: Christian and Muslim Perspectives, based on her 2016 Gifford Lectures at the University of Aberdeen, Mona Siddiqui advocates for a comparative approach to understanding human struggle. She models such an approach by drawing together Christian and Muslim reflections on the subject and on the related themes of suffering and hope. Struggle, according to Siddiqui, is part of the human search for hope amidst uncertainty, while suffering relates more directly to human anguish and loss. Although the misunderstood Islamic term jihad means internal struggle or striving for the way of God, the book is not about jihad, but rather about the broader human condition. Neither is it a systematic study of noteworthy Christian and Muslim theological texts on human struggle. Many of the writers whom Siddiqui features—mostly men—are indeed well-known Christian and Muslim thinkers. Yet Siddiqui has selected them, along with other authors who are not religious figures, because she finds their lives and work personally meaningful. Because their writings plumb the depths of human experience, readers will find them meaningful too.

The first chapter focuses on the ways that multiple philosophers, theologians, and cultural commentators have explored human struggle. In turning to Western thought in addition to Christian literature, Siddiqui implies that Christian-Muslim comparison need not focus only on theologians—a welcome departure from the narrow doctrinal emphasis of many studies on Christian-Muslim relations. Readers glimpse the lives of numerous figures who wrote about the human condition, desire, and the search for meaning. Most are representatives of modern Western and Western Christian thought: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Leo Tolstoy, Friedrich Nietzsche, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and Emmanuel Lévinas, among others. The medieval and modern Muslim writers whom Siddiqui features reflect on suffering, faith, and forgiveness from a Qur’anic perspective: Ibn Qayyam al-Jawziyya, al-Ash‘ari, al-Qushayri, al-Ghazali, Mahmoud Ayoub, and Muhammad Iqbal. In explaining how such scholars interpreted the stories of Adam and Job, Siddiqui relates human struggle to repentance in the Islamic tradition, in contrast to the Christian focus on redemption.

Siddiqui devotes the next two chapters more specifically to Christian-Muslim comparison, pairing Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (d. 1111) with Rainer Maria Rilke (d. 1926) in chapter two and Dietrich Bonhoeffer (d. 1945) with Sayyid Qutb (d. 1966) in chapter three. The Sunni philosopher-theologian al-Ghazali lived centuries before Rilke, the Austrian poet and novelist whom many consider not to have been a believing Christian. Siddiqui chose the two based on their literary merit, their practices of letter writing, and their similar struggles to rethink personal salvation. In offering thorough biographies of both men and their various writings, Siddiqui highlights their common experiences of restlessness and their pursuit of self-knowledge, a topic on which both figures also advised others. Al-Ghazali sought to draw near to God through mystical practices, and Rilke likewise yearned to experience God within the mystery of earthly life. Rilke’s frustrations with Christianity actually led him to write positively about Islam and the Qur’an.

Because of the many similarities between their lives (and their deaths by state-sanctioned execution), readers will find the third chapter on Bonhoeffer and Qutb to be an especially profound exercise in Christian-Muslim comparison. The two were roughly contemporaries, both were motivated by faith to act on behalf of the oppressed, and both were jailed by totalitarian regimes for their activism. Bonhoeffer, a German Lutheran pastor of the Confessing Church, spoke against the Nazi rise to power in the 1930s and, from prison, supported a failed attempt to assassinate Hitler in 1944. Qutb was an Islamic revivalist in Egypt who joined the Muslim Brotherhood and, from the 1940s until his death, confronted the exploitative power of the state and its neglect of ordinary citizens. Both men continued writing during their imprisonment, expressing a sense of inner spiritual struggle and anxiety over the ongoing oppression in their own societies. Likewise, both men saw action toward justice as a divine calling. The extent to which Qutb endorsed political violence remains subject to debate, although he was accused of conspiring to assassinate Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser. Bonhoeffer, however, felt justified in his attempt to remove Hitler from power. Siddiqui makes the compelling point that despite their similar life trajectories, Bonhoeffer has been treated in the West as a martyred saint, while Qutb has been labeled a terrorist. This substantive chapter provides significant background on twentieth-century German and Egyptian contexts and on Bonhoeffer and Qutb’s biographies. Such material makes it a useful resource for bringing interreligious comparison into courses on Christian or Islamic ethics.

In the fourth chapter, Siddiqui turns from a Christian-Muslim focus to internal Muslim conversations about human struggle as she examines the writings of two contemporary scholars, Muhammad Arkoun (d. 2010) and Khaled Abou el Fadl. These two men aimed to articulate the meaning of Islam for a modernizing world, asking, in Siddiqui’s words, “[w]ith so many competing sources of knowledge and ways of being, how can one live a life that is faithful, humane, generous, intellectually open and beautiful?” (154). In introducing the struggle for beauty in Islam, Siddiqui focuses on the American Muslim intellectual el Fadl’s book The Search for Beauty in Islam: A Conference of the Books (Lanham: University Press of America, 2001), which framed current societal problems in the Islamic world as exhibiting ugliness. Rather than the enforcement of rules, el Fadl argued, the path to beauty for both religious leaders and ordinary Muslims involves more serious pursuit of knowledge, zeal for learning, and use of independent reasoning. Sharing similar concerns Arkoun, an Algerian scholar who studied in France, sought a new epistemology for Muslim societies, including a rethinking of tradition and orthodoxy. He lamented the decay of the Islamic intellectual tradition and proposed that Islam as a belief system ought to be subject to critical inquiry and ethical imagination. By delineating some differences between Arkoun and el Fadl and the ways other Muslim scholars have responded to such proposals, Siddiqui sheds light on the critical discourse, dialogue, and debate occurring within Muslim intellectual circles today, offering readers new insights into the Islamic tradition and the variety of forms it takes in the contemporary world.

In the fifth, and final, chapter Siddiqui turns to present day political and social uncertainties amid the fragmentation of Western societies. Referencing a number of Western authors, she frames the contemporary moment as a struggle for meaning and authenticity amidst the power of a market society, the failure of liberal democracy, and limitless globalization. She then considers ongoing Black suffering and racial inequality in the United States specifically, drawing from the writings of public intellectual Cornel West and reflecting on the contributions of Malcolm X as a Muslim leader. Siddiqui recognizes the creative force of the African American community, its history of suffering and survival, and its demonstration of what West calls prophetic love. She concludes by emphasizing the need and possibility of meaningful social change.

In gathering together these numerous figures’ voices and providing a wealth of information about their lives and struggles, Human Struggle demonstrates striking commonalities between Christian and Muslim thinkers in their search for meaning and their work for justice. Siddiqui illustrates that a comparative approach that is not geared toward Christian-Muslim theological debates can generate a deeper understanding of the similarities that bind the two faiths and ultimately reflect one shared humanity. What are the practical implications for Christian-Muslim relations? Although Siddiqui does not answer this question directly, readers interested in interfaith dialogue may be encouraged to approach their dialogue partners as humans first and to build friendships through sharing life stories, struggles, and hopes before diving into theological questions.

The comparative approach exemplified in this book could be especially generative for Christian-Muslim Studies. Siddiqui’s model of examining common Christian-Muslim themes—instead of focusing only on texts that Christians and Muslims have written about each other—offers endless possibilities for research. In addition, this approach makes the book relevant for scholars and instructors of religion and theology working on topics outside of Christian-Muslim relations. For example, in courses on Islam, a new perspective could be gained on al-Ghazali by comparing him with Rilke. As an instructional text, the book provides a plethora of resources for analysis of questions that the book does not address. For example, classroom discussions on chapter 3 might consider how ideas about race and orientalist logics have shaped the drastically different ways that Christians in the West view Bonhoeffer and Qutb. Chapter 4 might be used in courses on Christian theology to compare Arkoun and el Fadl’s critiques of their own tradition to the ways that progressive Christians have worked to revitalize Christian worldviews. In the end, Siddiqui does not offer an overarching argument, but through the cultural, philosophical, and theological figures she highlights, her book reflects the truth of the human condition and introduces readers to new resources for personal contemplation and further scholarly investigation.