Malady of Islam [Hardcover]

Abdelwahab Meddeb (Author), Pierre Joris (Translator), Ann Reid (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 30, 2003

In this impassioned, erudite, and deeply moving book, Abdelwahab Meddeb, born and raised in Tunis and now living in Paris, details the breadth and scope of the Arab intellectual tradition and dismantles common preconceptions held by the Islamic and Western worlds. He describes the growing resentment between the West and the Islamic world as being due, in large part, to Islam's drift away from its own pluralist tradition. Tracing the history of the "conquering" of the Arab world by the West, he provides a detailed history of the ways in which Islamic fundamentalism has come to compensate for Western dominance. Directly addressing the terrorist attacks of September 11, he challenges us to reconsider the presumption that the gulf between the Islamic world and the West is too wide to breach.The "malady" of Islam lies in its alienation from the West and the corrosive influence that fundamentalism has wrought. This book is a correction of the historical record, a passionate description of the best of Islamic thought and culture, and an absolutely necessary read for those seeking a better understanding not only of Islam but also ourselves.

--This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The Malady of Islam is as much a lament as it is a critique. Abdelwahab Meddeb probes the thorny issue of Islamic fundamentalism and examines how it has gained such a dangerous foothold in the 20th century. His analysis, while learned and compelling, is, unfortunately, not entirely startling. A devout Muslim now living in Paris (he was raised in Tunis), Meddeb speaks with the authority and indignation of one who recognizes a "paradise lost." Citing a host of historical, poetical, and religious texts from the advent of Islam to the 20th century, he describes, with regret, how the one-time pluralistic tradition of the Muslim faith has been undercut by narrow readings of the Qur'an that denounce any departure from the letter of the law.

Meddeb judiciously illustrates how the failings of the West to create a universal equality after the Enlightenment has led to "ressentiment" in the Arab community and has contributed to the rise of fundamentalism (or, as he describes it, "the sickness in Islam"). However, he never uses those deficiencies to excuse the "crimes" committed, in part, in reaction to Western colonialism and self-interest. In fact, he reserves his most stinging criticism for a succession of Muslim writers who claim one, incontestable truth for the Qur'an. "If Mawdûdi [a Pakistani radical who lived from 1903 to 1979] reproaches the West with the death of God, we can accuse him of having inaugurated the death of humanity." Meddeb is most concerned with the "simplified, traditionalist thought" of the fundamentalists and considers it mostly to blame for the "entropy" he claims now plagues the Arab creative imagination. His proposed remedies for are philosophically complex and fitting to his subject. However, they require a serious rethinking of current geopolitical alliances and actions. Therefore, as much as we may crave the changes Meddeb recommends, we must ultimately realize how difficult they will be to achieve. --Silvana Tropea END --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

According to this impassioned but unfocused disquisition on the decline of the Muslim world, Islamic culture in its medieval heyday was tolerant, open-minded, rational and urbane, its science, literature and government a beacon unto benighted Europe. But "ancient Islam, intelligent and likable" is vastly different from "the political forms of present Islam, stupid and detestable" and steeped in xenophobia, fanaticism, prudery and resentment, according to Meddeb. Two factors are responsible for this "sickness." The first is modern strains of ultra-conservative Islam, especially Saudi Wahhabism and Egyptian fundamentalism, which distort Islam from "a tradition based on the principle of life and the cult of pleasure into a lugubrious race toward death." The second is "Americanization," which has spawned an amnesiac, TV-hypnotized but socially archaic consumer culture in which fundamentalism flourishes while Islam's humane heritage is forgotten. Citing European intellectuals like Voltaire, Kant and Camus alongside Muslim thinkers, Meddeb, a Tunisian novelist and poet now living in Paris, has an outlook best described as French: he wants Muslims to embrace the Enlightenment, but in its classical European form, not its corrupted American form. Meddeb's cultural history is wide-ranging but cursory and disjointed, and his often turgid style ("Hierarchical mobility and hegemonic restructuring can only be developed on the globalized world, and can only be involved in a shared axiology") doesn't make it easier to follow. His call for open debate and respect for difference in the Muslim world is welcome; but his insistence on the easygoing compatibility of Islam and modernity, based on cherry-picked progressive-sounding passages from the Koran and other medieval texts, is unconvincing.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 241 pages
• Publisher: Diane Pub Co (September 30, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0756784050
• ISBN-13: 978-0756784058
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 1.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,733,962 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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10 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars apologies, July 18, 2006

By 

Napoleon "Napoleon" (Hawaii) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Malady Of Islam (Hardcover)

An apologetic writing on various negative attitudes of Islam towards the USA. This book was originally written in French translated in English by Pierre Joris and Ann Reid. Joris is a Professor of poetry (avante garde)at the U. of Albany as well as a translator of French, German, English, et al, works. Unfortunately, Joris has used obsolete verbage, so expect to spend hours in the dictionary trying to figure out what Meddeb is really trying to say. No record of who Ann Reid is.

Nevertheless, this book tends to excuse various attacks on the USA, justified in that the USA has used it's power (hegemony) to thwart the advancement of the Islamic goals. This has aggravated the Islamic society to the point of 9/11; or, payback for all of the past years we have dissed the believers and the Sacred Scripture for our own progress.

It wiil probably be more enlightening to take French lessons and translate the book yourself.

9 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Obtuse, March 24, 2005

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D. Durham (Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Malady Of Islam (Hardcover)

I found this work very hard going. And yes I'm a native English speaker. I've been plowing through this thing for the past week. I cannot escape the immpression that all this is an effort to show off the authors "superior intellect".

I've translated doctoral studies from the education field and met the same kind of "hi falutin'" manner of writing. (Search the dictionary/thesarus for obscure words) Well surprise surprise the author is a literature professor.

If this was a genuine attempt to communicate with the wider masses, of which I'm one, then it fails dismally.