This narrative has a grafted-on feel, but it is still of use to those seeking to understand the origins and growth of...
Allen joins 9/11 to his long-standing interest in the soldier/scholar adventurers of the British Raj and turns up some interesting nuggets on Islamic fundamentalism.
As early as the 12th century, writes Allen (The Search for the Buddha, 2003, etc.), radicals sought to turn Islam into a militantly unaccommodating faith. Against the backdrop of the Mongol invasions of the Arab world, a Syrian jurist named Ibn Taymiyya declared Muhammad wrong to suggest—or so ecumenical clerics had determined—that jihad was an internal struggle for purity as much as a war against enemies of the faith. No, said Ibn Taymiyya: Jihad was literal, an “unrelenting struggle against all who stood in the way of Islam’s destiny.” That militant stance was revived in the 18th century in the Arabian backcountry, when fundamentalist Bedouins preached fire and brimstone. At first, the Wahhabi cult didn’t make much of a dent outside of the kingdom of the Saudis, rejected and condemned as schismatic. Still, where Islam was felt to be threatened, as in India, when brought under British rule, new adherents were easily recruited, particularly among young males “from among the poor and ignorant (preferably prepubescent orphans)” who could be easily indoctrinated. So it was in the Raj, when cadres of Islamic assassins set out to murder as many Britons as they could, retiring to the schools called madrassas to read scripture in their off hours. The same demographic category, writes Allen, fueled the Taliban, which emerged “seemingly from nowhere” in 1994 to seize power in Afghanistan, soon to be allied with al-Qaeda. Both movements grew from the same fundamentalist roots, the author asserts, adding that others will follow unless grievances such as the lack of education and opportunity for young Muslims—to say nothing of the lack of a Palestinian state—are neutralized.
This narrative has a grafted-on feel, but it is still of use to those seeking to understand the origins and growth of Islamic extremism.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-306-81522-2
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Da Capo
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2006
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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