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THE CALL

INSIDE THE GLOBAL SAUDI RELIGIOUS PROJECT

Varagur wisely allows many voices to be heard—and shows how Saudi influence is now more transparent but still insidious.

An award-winning journalist follows the money to track the pervasive spread of Saudi Arabia’s particular brand of ultraconservative Islam.

Varagur, who reports on Indonesia for the Guardian and other South and Southeast Asian countries for a variety of publications, scrupulously lays out three case studies in which Saudi Arabia has managed to export Wahhabism, often in violent ways. The author looks at vibrant Salafi (the global brand of Wahhabism) communities in Indonesia, where her work took her in recent years; northern Nigeria, which has produced numerous states run by strict Sharia law and given rise to Boko Haram; and Kosovo, a small country of 1.8 million people that has nonetheless “contributed more foreign fighters per capita to ISIS than any other country in Europe.” The leaders of these “thriving Salafi ecosystems” were originally trained (indoctrinated) in Saudi Arabia, specifically at the Islamic University of Medina, which was built in the early 1960s by King Faisal and has become one of the most significant instruments of Saudi “dawa,” or call to Islam that “refers to proselytization more generally.” With the injection of oil money in the 1970s and the perceived threat of the Islamic Revolution in 1979, the kingdom endowed several powerful charities—e.g., the Muslim World League, which developed into a violent “intolerance factory.” In her three riveting, thoroughly researched case studies, Varagur investigates why the Saudi brand of Islam is so appealing: It is radical in its simplicity, clearly instructs behavior, provides direct access to important texts, and offers a sense of community to its believers worldwide. The author also chronicles how Faisal personally sponsored delegations from IUM to African nations and how Saudi charities were key elements in the effort to rebuild Kosovo after the 1998-1999 war. Varagur wisely allows many voices to be heard—and shows how Saudi influence is now more transparent but still insidious.

Pub Date: April 21, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-73362-376-6

Page Count: -

Publisher: Columbia Global Reports

Review Posted Online: March 7, 2020

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A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES

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

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HOW DEMOCRACIES DIE

The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics,...

A provocative analysis of the parallels between Donald Trump’s ascent and the fall of other democracies.

Following the last presidential election, Levitsky (Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America, 2003, etc.) and Ziblatt (Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy, 2017, etc.), both professors of government at Harvard, wrote an op-ed column titled, “Is Donald Trump a Threat to Democracy?” The answer here is a resounding yes, though, as in that column, the authors underscore their belief that the crisis extends well beyond the power won by an outsider whom they consider a demagogue and a liar. “Donald Trump may have accelerated the process, but he didn’t cause it,” they write of the politics-as-warfare mentality. “The weakening of our democratic norms is rooted in extreme partisan polarization—one that extends beyond policy differences into an existential conflict over race and culture.” The authors fault the Republican establishment for failing to stand up to Trump, even if that meant electing his opponent, and they seem almost wistfully nostalgic for the days when power brokers in smoke-filled rooms kept candidacies restricted to a club whose members knew how to play by the rules. Those supporting the candidacy of Bernie Sanders might take as much issue with their prescriptions as Trump followers will. However, the comparisons they draw to how democratic populism paved the way toward tyranny in Peru, Venezuela, Chile, and elsewhere are chilling. Among the warning signs they highlight are the Republican Senate’s refusal to consider Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee as well as Trump’s demonization of political opponents, minorities, and the media. As disturbing as they find the dismantling of Democratic safeguards, Levitsky and Ziblatt suggest that “a broad opposition coalition would have important benefits,” though such a coalition would strike some as a move to the center, a return to politics as usual, and even a pragmatic betrayal of principles.

The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics, rather than in the consensus it is not likely to build.

Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2018

ISBN: 978-1-5247-6293-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017

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