The Battle for God by Karen Armstrong  (124)
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
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
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.
See all Editorial Reviews
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
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.
See all Editorial Reviews
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