About the list. This list was formed idiosyncratically many years ago now, by browsing through my shelves and picking out a variety of books that I think are essential, or at least helpful, to Christians who sincerely want to engage with Islam. I have not taken the time to update it.
It is very light on works specifically intended to guide Christians in sharing their faith, although I have included one or two of those at the end. Many works by contemporary Christian authors are at best derivative, and at worst just really bad. My preference here is for accessible works of scholarship that cover the range of topics in which intelligent Christians are most often interested. You might also want to compare this list with the suggested reading at the end of chapter one of my New Introduction to Islam, and also note that each subsequent chapter of that book also includes a more specialized reading list. The list is not carefully ordered, but does proceed in a general sort of way from broader to more specialized studies.
A. J. Arberry, The Koran Interpreted (Touchstone 1996). Arberry’s is still the best translation in literary terms. He succeeds better than any other translator in capturing the rhythm and literary quality of the Qur’an. But for everyday use, I would recommend the more accessible and widely distributed translation by Yusuf Ali, The Meaning of the Holy Qur’an. Try to obtain an edition that includes the Arabic text, and take the copious translators notes with as large a grain of salt as you might take the notes in the Scofield Bible.
Jonathan Berkey, The Formation of Islam: Religion and Society in the Near East, 600-1800 (Cambridge 2003). Solid historical introduction to the emergence of Islam. Readers with a serious interest in Islamic history will eventually have to reckon with the three volumes of Marshall Hodgson, The Venture of Islam, which is still without rival.
Michael Cook, Muhammad (Oxford 1983). Irreverent, amusing, unorthodox, and very short. This is one of the most lively introductions to the study of Muhammad and the problems connected with it. The seriously interested should take on Alfred Guillaume, trans., The Life of Muhammad: A translation of Ibn Ishaq’s Sirat Rasul Allah which is a translation of our earliest extant biography.
Michael Cook, The Koran: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford 2000). Also irreverent, amusing and unorthodox – the best short introduction to the Qur’an that I know of.
Fazlur Rahman, Major Themes of the Qur’an. The best guide to the contents of the Qur’an from a modern Muslim perspective.
Fazlur Rahman. Islam. The best general introduction to Islam by a Muslim scholar.
Tarif Khalidi, The Muslim Jesus: Sayings and Stories in Islamic Literature (Harvard 2001). A useful anthology that offers a vivid portrayal of how Jesus is portrayed in Islamic tradition.
Geoffrey Parrinder, Jesus in the Qur’an (Sheldon 1976). An essential study of the portrayal of Jesus in the Qur’an
Carl W. Ernst, The Shambhala Guide to Sufism: An essential guide to the philosophy and practice of the mystical tradition of Islam. The importance of Sufism is often underestimated by Christians coming to the study of Islam for the first time. This is one of many possible introductions. Another widely distributed introduction is Annemarie Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam.
Tariq Ramadan, Western Muslims and the Future of Islam (Oxford 2004). Essential reading for anyone interested in how some educated and thoughtful Muslims are trying to navigate the question of what it means to be a faithful Muslim in the West.
Khalid Abou el Fadl, The Great Theft (HarperOne 2007). A popular work by one of North America’s top scholars of Islamic law, and a consistent voice for liberal interpretations of Islam. See also his Speaking in God’s Name, for a rather more dense treatment of contemporary Muslim debates over Sharia.
C. Eric Lincoln, The Black Muslims in America (3rd ed. Eerdmans 1994). Classic introduction to Islam in the African American community.
Roy Mottahedeh, The Mantle of the Prophet: Religion and Politics in Iran (Pantheon 1985). A fascinating and highly readable entry into the religious and political experience of modern Iranians through a semi-fictional biography of an Iranian religious leader from his childhood to the Iranian Revolution.
Hugh Goddard, A History of Christian-Muslim Relations (New Amsterdam 2000). Goddard is probably the leading scholar in this field at present.
Todd Lawson, The Crucifixion and the Qur’an: A Study in the History of Muslim Thought (One World 2009). A recent and fascinating study of one of the thorniest issues in Muslim-Christian dialogue and debate.
Miroslav Volf, Ghazi bin Muhammad, and Melissa Yarrington, eds. A Common Word: Muslims and Christians on Loving God and Neighbor (Eerdmans 2010). In some ways not so interesting because the authors of these essays are all trying so pathetically hard to be nice. But it is important to acknowledge this initiative.
Fouad Elias Accad, Building Bridges: Christianity and Islam (NavPress 1997). One of the better short “guides” to sharing Christian faith with Muslims at a practical level.
Colin Chapman, Cross and Crescent: Responding to the Challenge of Islam (IVP 2003). One of the handful of contemporary Christian treatments of Islam that I can recommend. Chapman has long experience of relationship with Muslims and his approach is unfailingly careful, balanced and irenic.
And finally, in the category of great-classics-that-no-one-ever-actually-reads: Kenneth Cragg, The Call of the Minaret. This was a truly ground-breaking work when it was first published (1956), and it still resonates quite powerfully for those who have the patience for Cragg’s style. Cragg also has dozens of other books that similarly make no accommodations to those of us with lesser minds, lesser vocabularies, or a yearning for clarity, but many of them are nevertheless well worth struggling through. See especially The Event of the Qur’an, The Mind of the Qur’an, and Muhammad and the Christian: A Question of Response.
This list feels like it lacks an introduction to Christianity for Muslims, both by Christians and by Muslims.