Is Your Faith Real?

“Is your faith real?” is not a question about the religion printed on an identity card. It is a question about conduct — about the shopkeeper who prays faithfully and cheats his customers, the employee who talks about integrity while stealing time from work, the husband who preaches honour and mistreats his wife.

Dr. Ahmad Bassiouni argues that the problem has never been religion itself, but the distance a person keeps between the faith they proclaim and the faith they practise. Islam, Christianity and Judaism all arrived carrying a clear moral message; this book asks what is left of it in everyday dealings.

Chapter by chapter the same question returns, sometimes gently and sometimes with unsettling force: if you say you are religious, where does it show?