Contents do Not reflect title- Religious people will be insulted - Rated 
I bought this book going by the title "What Islam did for us" but the subject matter is totally different. He writes more about Christian History then anything else. There is little about What Islam did for us.
Religious people of all the three religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam maybe deeply offended by some of the author's views. Stay well away from this book. The title does not reflect the contents of the book.
The book's title and substance hardly connect - Rated 
I have 3 observations about this text:
1) Of the 217 written pages, the first 78 pages focus on issues and events pre-dating Mohammed's prophethood, and the introduction of Islam as we know it. Another 60 pages focus on the Crusades. Neither of these two sections (64%) remotely covers what Islam did for us (meaning Western civilization). And that is the central problem of the text - it doesn't really engage the title.
2) After I read the book, I learned about the author's academic focus. He has written 'Cracking the Symbol Code', 'Rex Deus: The True Mystery of Rennes le Chateau' and 'Rosslyn: Guardian of the Secrets of the Holy Grail' (which provided key material to The Da Vinci Code). Wallace-Murphy is neither an expert on Islam nor its contribution to the West. Hence, his not writing about the title.
3) Despite the above, Wallace-Murphy manages to overview glimpses, at a high level, of Islam's contrubution to the West. Specifically, the Muslim world's drive to understand and study the world (which pre-dates its European counterpart in the Renaissance), the Islamic world's storing of vast swathes of classical European knowledge (which otherwise would have been lost), and finally, as the intellectual platform for the European Renaissance. In this sense, Wallace-Murphy's text is a little tragic. He chooses to pay little attention to this fascinating subject despite claiming to write about it!
To conclude: there are real gems of information and facts in this text, but given the author's limited expertise in this space, he ends up writing about way too much which is way too irrelavant to the subject matter; and in doing so, he covers the subject matter in a limited and anaemic way.
Read it before giveing openion - Rated 
Like a typical fanatic he writes without reading the book and without even understanding what the book is about.
It is not about Islam, it is about Muslims.
With a large number of Muslims like him we can understand why they are so backward.
a good read - Rated
I bought have read this book, and also used it especially for the part on muslim spain.
have found this very helpfull as other books do not realise the vast impact islamic civilisation has had on the western world. here are some extracts from the book:
« Caliph (prince) Al-Hakam (961-76 CE) a peace loving and scholarly man surrounded himself with scientists and scholars, creating a library of 400,000 books (pg 108 Tim Wallace Murphy)
« Price Al Hakam established schools and centre¡¦s of learning open to people of every social class. (pg 108 Tim Wallace Murphy)
«
« ¡§Religious tolerance in Muslim Spain ensured education for many regardless of their faith.¡¨ (Pg129 ¡V Tim Wallace-Murphy)
« Classical learning crossed from Spain into Christian Europe with the help of Jewish scholars who could easily translate between Arabic, Hebrew and Latin (pg113 Tim Wallace Murphy)
« It was well known and respected colleges in Al-Andalus that became the models on which Oxford and Cambridge were based (T.W.Murphy pg 119)
Comment, not review - Rated
I have not read this book, but rather the controversial reviews about it.
All I would like to say is that if you want to learn about Christianity, read the Bible;
If you want to learn about Judaism, read the Torah;
And if you want to learn about Islam, read the Quran.
These seem to be the most logical and accurate ways to learn about any religion, avoiding any opinion or bias.
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