An interesting book. Navid Kermani is a German of Iranian background, born in Germany. He is writing about Islam and religion in general for his 12-year-old daughter. Some of it is amazingly simple and at the same time deep. At other times not.

Both he while growing up, and his daughter now had Roman Catholic religion classes at school, with the result that he knows the Bible and not just the Koran. However, while he often says that you can't put everyone in a religion into one pot, he often speaks of Christianity when he really means Roman Catholicism, and seems unaware of certain differences in how dogma would be expressed now as opposed to twenty years ago. He also ignores aspects of Islam that don't fit his arguments.

Many of the Koran quotes he gives are very beautiful, and certainly more understandable than the translations I have tried to read.

The problem is what sort of rating to give. Parts are certainly worth 4 1/2. Others would not quite make a 3. I guess I'll stick with 3 1/2, as with all its faults, I think this book is worth reading. ( )

This book was commissioned in an unusual way. The author’s father, an Iranian physician who had immigrated to Germany years earlier, was on his deathbed. He extracted a promise from his German-born son to teach Islam to his young daughter, the dying man’s granddaughter.
Kermani was already the author of several books on Islam and Christian-Muslim dialogue, but this was different. How to catch and hold the attention of one’s own child, on the cusp of puberty? The result is a slightly-fictionalized record of their conversations, although the child’s questions and responses only appear indirectly.
The Islam Kermani depicts is multi-faceted. He draws not only on the Quran but on Sufi mysticism, particularly the poet Rūmī and the mystic scholar Ibn Arabī. The result is a tolerant and merciful way of life based on a sense of wonder. This is reinforced by frequent reference to the insights of quantum mechanics.
Kermani acknowledges the other face of Islam, the violent, authoritarian, intolerant side, but maintains that this reflects neither the Quran nor the best of the long tradition of interpretation.
He also draws frequent comparisons with Christianity and Judaism, always respectful and open-minded. As a result, I not only came away with a view of Islam quite different from the form that captures news headlines but also insights into Christianity from the perspective of a sympathetic outsider.
Nevertheless, the form of the book, which was wide-ranging, like an actual discussion, made it difficult at times to pay attention or retain what I’d read. At other times, a thought would strike me so forcefully that I had to stop and savor it for a while. One example is when he likens the universe to a long poem God sings to mankind. Thus, the long-term effect of this book will be to have served as a way of whetting my appetite to read and learn more from other sources, including more books by this author. ( )