Customer Reviews

Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples

5 star:		(37)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(26)

 

 

Beyond Belief is a complex book about complex issues; a book of interviews as diverse as the countries that Naipaul visited, and the individuals he interviewed. One of the themes that attracted me to the book was the question "what role does religion play in the lives of the people in Malaysia and Indonesia, where Islam is a nation-building factor?" The interesting thing is that Islam played a positive, reassuring role for many of the Malays and Indonesians interviewed by Naipaul. To convert to Islam was a way to gain respect and power in societies where the economies are dominated by a minority of former Chinese immigrants with business acumen and drive to "make it" superior to that of the local population. In Iran and Pakistan, however, Islam had a devastating influence, and the rise of fundamentalism has shattered the hopes of people for freedom, certainty, belongingness, and self-assurance. Islamic fundamentalists are essentially utopians with a totalitarian attitude: "The cruelty of Islamic fundamentalism is that it allows only to one people - the Arabs, the original people of the Prophet - a past, and sacred places, pilgrimages and earth reverences. These sacred Arab places have to be the sacred places of all the converted people. Converted peoples have to strip themselves of their past; of converted peoples nothing is required but the purest faith (if such a thing can be arrived at), Islam, submission. It is the most uncompromising kind of imperialism."

One of the interesting ideas in this book is that great conversions take place when the pace of change overwhelms nations or cultures that "have no means of understanding or retrieving their past" because they lack the education, the language, and above all the freedom to reflect on it. Given the importance of understanding one's own past in order to gain an identity, Naipaul sees Islamic fundamentalism as a dead-end road: it denies the converted peoples an open-minded education, a free language, and independent thoughts.

Naipaul tries to re-create the past and preserve the present. He writes grass-roots history in his interviews, and it is amazing how many details he weaves into his narrative. His obsession with facts and details is only a logical consequence of his belief in the importance of grasping reality (past and present), but it makes for difficult reading. I felt quite overwhelmed by Naipaul's elaborate descriptions of what he saw, and, to be honest, I thought less would sometimes have been more.

Overall, Beyond Belief was an interesting book for me because I try to get a better understanding of Malaysia and Indonesia; and it was a real eye-opener where Pakistan was concerned. I had no idea what feudalism meant in terms of suffering for the people who are unprotected by the law until I read Naipaul's stories about feudal Bahawalpur, a state resting on serfdom and incorporated into Pakistan in 1954.

Keeping in mind the endless "mea-culpa" books that detail Colonial Christianity's impact on native cultures in say, Africa and Latin America, I find it refreshing to see an author of Naipaul's stature take on the Islamic Arab Empire and the tragic consequences of its own colonial past.

What Naipaul depicts in this book and its companion volume, "Among the Believers," is nothing less than a very thorough "wiping out" of vibrant local cultures by a religion/political system that holds that everything before its arrival is from "the time of ignorance". (Never mind the fact that pre-Islamic Iran and Pakistan were fabulous empires that fathered ancient cultures far more sophisticated than anything produced by their Arab conquerors.)

Naipaul is relentless in hammering home this point through meticulously detailed observations. The most damning parts of these two books (I recommend buying both) are the contrasts that Naipaul draws between modern-day, non-Islamic India and modern-day, Islamic Pakistan -- India "ever expanding" and Pakistan "ever contracting" -- despite the fact that both share common races, histories, problems and cultures. If you read the current news about Pakistan and its precipitous slippage into religious obscurantism, you realize just how prescient Naipaul's observations have proven themselves to be. India, for all its overcrowding and poverty, is currently experiencing a high-tech boom and gaining world-wide respect for its vibrant film industry, Bollywood. Meanwhile, Pakistan's big "contribution" of the past few years to the world stage has been the production of an "Islamic nuclear bomb". No wonder this book makes Muslims uncomfortable. Thanks, Naipaul, for having the courage to write these books while living in the Salman Rushdie era.

In 1979, the distinguished writer V. S. Naipaul set off for an extensive tour of four Muslim countries. His reports from Iran, Pakistan, Malaysia, and Indonesia had a quirky but brilliant quality. In each of his destinations, Naipaul found a surprising contradiction: those intent on rejecting the West in the name of Islam are also adamant about gaining the fruits of the West's achievements.

Nearly two decades later, Naipaul recently retraced his steps and visited the same four countries, sometimes even visiting the same individuals he'd talked to a generation earlier. His quick vignettes, word sketches, and pieces of conversation make Beyond Belief a pleasure to read. His travels this time dwell less on internal contradictions and more on the widespread feeling that things have gone amiss. In Iran, the country of most direct interest to Americans, Naipaul finds that the revolution of 1978-79 has run its course and is virtually defunct. Regulations, Naipaul finds again and again, are everywhere, "deforming people's lives." They have taken the place of spontaneity. Naipaul finds that the government's heavy-handed use of religion has turned many Muslims against their religion. Hypocrisy has become rank: Men grow beards for job applications, to enhance their religiosity, then but them off. "The word religious rankled with Mehrdad," he notes of a typical young man, a believer in God but a rebel against the many rules His earthly representatives impose. Things have gotten so bad, a most revealing conspiracy theory is making the rounds-that Khomeini was a British agent and "the establishing of the Islamic state in Iran was an anti-Islamic plot by the Powers." In significant ways, Naipaul finds Iran to be an Islamic-flavored version of the Soviet Union. Like residents of the Soviet Union in the 1980s too, this is a people worn out by their history and their current misery. The country, Naipaul observes, "had been given an almost universal knowledge of pain." And out of this has come not new hope, not new wisdom, but a shattering new nihilism, again reminiscent of the Soviet experience.

Middle East Quarterly, June 1998

This is a patchwork of biographies, often told through a translator, created by an unemotional and unentangled observer. It covers the author's 1995 travels through Indonesia, Iran, Pakistan, and Malaysia. These biographies come together into a unified theme of captivation by the beauty and idealism of the Koran, the search for heaven in the afterlife and for paradise on earth. But death and destruction is found too often. This is a powerful writing, and certain sections burn in the readers mind. For example:

The Indonesian Imaddudin's response to kindness shown to him in the United States: "God loves me very much." A strange twist on a beautiful thought. The context was such that his meaning was clear. While it was the Americans who were kind to him, he owes them nothing. It was, after all, God who loves him and provided for him. Imaduddin is now free to dismiss all kindness shown to him. I guess this gives him license to hate and destroy folks, no matter how good they were to him. And it does not seem to leave any room for compromise, for people of different views living together peaceably.

One of Naipaul's interviewees blatantly states that if a Muslim sees an un-Islamic practice, you must stop it by force and ". . .this tradition gives the Muslim license to act violently."

Then there was Mr. Jaffrey, the news writer, agitating for a Islamic state in Iran for a number of years. This finally comes about when the Shah is overthrown. Mr. Jaffrey, on being told he has an appointment with the "student" rebels the next morning, immediately flees the country.

I can see how certain Muslim or mideastern readers might hate this book. Much of this writing is concerned with the need for freedom from fear and want (conspicuously absent for many in most of these countries); the tyranny of religion; family abandonment justified by religion and polygamy; obsession with following rules to the exclusion of common sense; abuse of the unprotected, and so on. I had thought that the Koran forbid the killing of one Muslim by another, but that is rampant throughout the book. In particular, on the section about Iran, Naipaul refers to the shortage of husbands, because so many young men had been killed in the war with Iraq. Also one can sense through the biographies that there are different motivations for following Islam. These include forceful coercion, the necessity in order to conduct commerce, a source of hope, sense of community and being part of group, the need to earn a living and so on.

While Naipaul covers the positive sides of Islam, which include comfort, a sense of hope, and a sense of instant community and oneness with a huge group of others, the most interesting and memorable material is also the most negative.

Naipaul's prologue is especially powerful, in which he describes the ". . .crossover from old beliefs, earth religions . . to the revealed religions - Christianity and Islam . .. . like a cultural big bang, the steady grinding down of the old world."

Most of Naipaul ties in very closely to David Landes' The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, in which he discusses how tyranny (religious or political) can be debilitating to the progress of a nation.

The book is hugely relevant to 9-11-01 and the fact that it was written about events in 1995 and copyrighted in 1998, makes it all the more remarkable. I give this fascinating and highly informative writing the strongest recommendation possible.

In my point of view, this book is a Classic.
First because its prose, its writing quality. Naipaul is a great writer, a master who can describe richly what he sees, what he thinks and what he experiences - as few writers could. He moves quickly from a single detail of daily life to a big panorama of history. He can be subtle, and he is also sharp. Several times he is ironical, and most of all his writing is fluid and simple, unregarding the complexity of his themes.      
A second thing is the very particular situation of this book.  I had never read a book in which the same author travels to countries he had been 20 years before. Besides, for us of the West, it's an entry into the islamic world. Through his words, we have a very clear look over Iran, Pakistan, Malasia and Indonesia social and political experiences. And what results those systems brought.          
Another great thing about this book is how Naipaul is a keen observer of culture. The past, present and the future are linked. Waves of subtle transformations and assimilations sometimes occur very very slowly. Sometimes abrupt facts take place. The people who talk to Naipaul are real, and they tell him their "own truth" through many different ways: their lives, behaviors, way of speaking, gestures. Every little sign counts, and fortunately Naipaul is there.
Those who want to complete Naipaul's journey should also read "Among the Believers", 1979. Great narratives by a master, these books bring a lot of reflections about culture, religion, politics, and our values. Everyone should read! I'm glad I did.

Here, the great traveler and cultural observer V.S. Naipaul travels to lands in which non-Arab peoples were historically converted to Islam. This offers many insights into how adherents see their faith and their place in the larger Islamic order. Naipaul's modus operandi is to dispense with predictable travel writing based on scenery and touring, and to illuminate the lands visited by telling the stories of the ordinary people met along the way. This method gives us intriguing looks at Indonesia, where a hybrid version of Islam, influenced by old Buddhist and Hindu cultural traditions, encourages local adherents to strive for their own type of Islamic renaissance; Iran, with the after-effects of the inconclusive and poorly realized Islamic revolution of 1979; Pakistan, which still shows political and social damage from the 1947 religious and cultural partition from India; and Malaysia, where Islam has united the native Malays in the face of the large Chinese immigrant population.

One problem with this book is that Naipaul is revisiting areas he previously wrote about back in the late 1970s, with the goal of providing a modern update on these lands. But given his habit of recounting his old reports and comparing them to new reports, it is sometimes difficult for the reader to tell which decade is being discussed. Meanwhile, Naipaul's focus on the people and their stories definitely makes the histories and cultures of these lands come alive, and that is Naipaul's greatest distinction. But in this book, dozens of biographies just pile up one after the other, as one person's memoirs end quietly and are replaced by those of yet another person. That makes this book seem more like a loose collection with no beginning, middle, or end. Hence, the reader gets little sense of any authoritative conclusions to the points being made about these interesting and often trouble-prone lands. {~doomsdayer520~]

VS Naipaul helps us walk though the psychological landscape of the madness and despair of abandoned societies. The end of the Cold War and the retreat of Colonialism have set some countries adrift, searching for meaning. The people of the dark are dimly conscious of the societies of the light. They fail to see themselves for what they are and the world as it is. They opt for magical explanation, for the irrational. The discourse of the people is religious; the actions are sociopathological. Perhaps, hints Naipaul, Islam, has always been the religion of psychopathic societies. In the name of Islam, warriors are beheaded, women and children are enslaved, land is annexed and treasure carried away. Today when societies and ethnic groups become irrelevant, the individual and the community are no longer ratified. Collectively some turn to the one religion that allows them to submerge their (unimportant) being in a new collective identity and express their rage. Naipaul nails the motivating forces behind Islamic terrorism: marginalization, ethnic and racial hatred, poverty,unemployment,powerlessness, a dim understanding of civilization and a blazing resentment of abandonment. It is odious to live under colonial masters. It is far worse to see them walk away indifferent to those they leave behind. Islam fulfills the search for relevance, It is a purely destructive tool for redirecting and refocusing self hatred and contempt. What Islam does not do is give individuals and groups the means to deal with reality- to improve their own condition and the condition of their nation in peacetime. Under Islam, mankind engages in unrelenting warfare against the infidel of the moment. The focus is lost when the battle ends so the battle must never end. The religion feeds on blood, murder, ignorance and chaos.

Naipaul's essential thesis here is not complex, but it does have the ability to offend. Naipaul comes from the largely Western school of separation of Church and State. In other words, he believes that a healthy, complete human culture is always complemented by religion, but should NEVER be dominated by it. He illustrates this point by examining the lives and psychologies of individuals in the so-called "conquered" Islamic states, with a particular emphasis on suggesting that religious dogma creates an incomplete and unhealthy human condition in its defenders and practitioners. In this way, Naipaul's thesis is similar to that presented by Milosz in THE CAPTIVE MIND: Only when freed from dogmatic captivity is the human mind capable of transcending our most basic appetites. If you are comfortable with that idea you will probably like this book. If you are uncomfortable with that thought, you're probably going to hate it.

Beyond Belief is the well-written but somewhat rambling story of the author's revisit to four non-Arab Muslim countries (Indonesia, Iran, Pakistan, and Malaysia). Naipaul says in the preface, "This is not a book of opinion." In my view, that's too bad, because it needs some central idea to give the interesting stories it tells cohesiveness and heart. Even when Naipaul does give opinions, while he expresses them with iconoclasm and a bit of eloquence, they lack as ideas.

Probably the most important theme of the book is how Muslims of other cultures look up to Arab culture and down on their own. Naipaul describes the attitude he meets that makes invaders into heroes and encourages cultural self-loathing as a "dreadful mangling of history." The consequences are, perhaps, worst in "feudal" Pakistan. The pictures he paints should make any Western liberal rethink the doctrine that all religions must, by definition, be created equal; your heart cries for the women, in particular, locked indoors for a lifetime.

But instead of exploring the relationship between Mohammed and modern Islam, Naipaul cops out by generalizing (in a half-hearted way) about "revealed religion," Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. But in essence, I think Islam shares more affinity with Marxism and other revolutionary religions. Naipaul seems to pick up on some of those similiarities, but doesn't follow the clues to their source. (In Mohammed and Marx.)

Beyond Belief is about the need for roots -- connections with ancestors, traditions, and land. However, Naipaul sometimes seems to forget that people also have a need for truth -- for universals that transcends the particular.

Naipaul's assumed contrast between the "converted" and those whose religion is an organic growth from local traditions, while partly true, is largely a false dichotomy. He forgets that Islam was almost as iconoclastic in regard to Arab culture as it is towards other cultures. The alternative is for universal truth to find roots in local traditions. (That is the topic of my research. Jesus, by contrast to Mohammed, said he came to "fulfill," not "abolish," Jewish culture. In the space of a single generation, Christianity went from being Jewish to being a Mediterranean religion. Lately I have been researching how Indian and Chinese intellectuals have begun to describe the Gospel as the fulfillment of thousands of years of Asian culture in a way that reinvigorates, rather than suppresses, those traditions. In Japan, by contrast, with its embrace of cold modernity, I find a sterile conformity like that Naipaul decries in Muslim countries.) The question this book should raise is how the particular can be saved, and enhanced, within the universal -- of finding universals that encourages fitting expression of all that is most human.

Not only his religious, but also his political thought needs deeper study. He describes the "religious state" in which "religion was not a matter of private conscience" as one full of "simple roguery." Perhaps because his subject is Islam, and his background Hindu, he seems to have in mind two simple alternatives -- a false dichotomy between a religion that is entirely private (sanyassi) and one that takes over the state. (As Mohammed did.) He does not consider the possibility of politics informed and enriched by a faith that is nevertheless kept distinct from the state.

As my first taste of Naipaul, I enjoyed the book. I found the stories invigorating, timely, and disturbing. But I don't agree with whatever literary theory of is responsible for the book's lack of coherence and systematic thought. Naipaul picks up pieces of truth here and there, and examines them with scrupulous honesty, but seems afraid to synthesize a system (at least here) or offer solutions, for fear of rigidity or forced conformity. Perhaps that is what the title of the book means, that he thinks ideas too dangerous to deal in? I put the book down hoping next time Naipaul will go beyond unbelief and tell us what he thinks, but looking forward to reading him again, in any case.

(...)

This book will obviously raise very fierce reaction as it portrays life in modern Islamic states ruled by the fundamentalist leaders. It may be hard for some people to look at it objectively. It will be easy to denounce Naipaul.

But Naipaul has very carefully portrayed how the so called Islamic revolutions that replaced the autocratic regime in Iran or the colonial powers in other Asian countries, have developed their own system of autocracy and tyranny.

The beauty of Naipaul's writing is that he is not describing the politics or the religious dogmas, but he is providing us with the portraits of various men and women at different places in their society. It is through their eyes, their pain and sufferings, their hopes and despairs,that we get to see these countries.

I am very moved with this book and I highly recommend this book.