Love, Sex and Marriage: Insights from Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
Dan Cohn-Sherbok, George D. Chryssides, and Dawoud El-Alami
SCM Press £16.99
(978-0-334-04405-5)
Church Times Bookshop £15.30 (Use code CT533 )

IN Part 1 of this book, each of the writers, representing one of the three faiths, contributes a short essay on the themes of sex-law, marriage, family life, and divorce: 12 essays in all. Part 2 is a "trialogue" in which the three authors discuss their earlier essays, this time under the headings sex before marriage, marriage, sex within marriage, homosexuality, polygamy, intermarriage, abortion, assisted reproduction and adoption, family life, and divorce.

The appalling restrictions on women in Islam are unflinchingly described in several of El-Alami's essays, along with "marriages of pleasure" and "the traveller's marriage". A husband has the "right of discipline", and, since the Qur'an is "infallible", the verse allowing wife-beating "has to be accepted as it stands": "There are no legal restrictions to a man's power to divorce his wife at any time and for any or no reason."

Whereas female circumcision is breezily dismissed as "not prescribed in Islam, but pre-dates it", 140 million girls and women are currently suffering the consequences of it; and its legitimisation by Islamic authorities and customs cannot be denied.

The title of the book is misleading. There is nothing about love (except for a couple of references to C. S. Lewis). "Insight" implies a deep understanding of something, or the ability to see something in a different way. It is difficult to see how the introductory descriptive style of writing can achieve this.

An introduction to the historical background of the three faiths is given in a mere 11 pages, suggesting that the intended readership is fairly elementary. All three (male) authors appear indifferent to the andro-centrism of the traditions they describe.

There are unfortunate errors. God is said to have created Adam out of the dust of the ground in Genesis 1, not Genesis 2. There is no biblical idea of Adam and Eve's being created as "one flesh". Men and women become "one flesh" in marriage. The Roman Catholic Church is wrongly said to teach "that the primary purpose of sex is procreation". Humanae Vitae (here wrongly dated as 1969) insists on "the inseparable connection . . . between the unitive significance and the procreative significance" of marriage, both of which are "inherent to the marriage act . . . which man on his own initiative may not break". "The interoperation of scripture" gets past the copy-editor, together with many typos.

It is a relief to discover in Part 2 that some of the Islamic views are judged by the other co-authors as "profoundly disturbing" and "monstrous". The defiant response is that there is no scope for change because "certain elements . . . are contained in the Qur'an, which for Muslims is immutable and infallible." This is a total hermeneutical failure, acknowledging neither the possibility of alternative readings, nor the immoral consequences and pain caused directly by its interpretative assumptions.

Asma Barlas, for instance, herself a Muslim, reads the Qur'an as an anti-patriarchal text in the light of the theology that she finds there, and finds in the replication of seventh-century Arab patriarchy a species of idolatry.

Dr Adrian Thatcher is Visiting Professor in the Department of Theology and Religion at the University of Exeter.