Of more interest as sociology than as a study in the social psychology of terrorism.
A social scientist examines the lives of three Canadian Muslims who left their prairie homes to join the jihad.
Soufi, a Muslim convert, attended school with the subjects of his study, members of a community who, after 9/11, became increasingly radicalized even as the most moderate members of that community came under suspicion of terrorism. The three disappeared from Winnipeg in 2007; with their disappearance, one friend remarks to Soufi, “they left a mess.” In a narrative that often reads as an academic report, though with plenty of human interest, Soufi looks at that mess through a geopolitical lens: Thanks to the prominence of the “clash of civilizations” thesis at the time, North American Muslims were viewed as the Other even as political leaders rushed to declare that Muslims were part of the “good” civilization as long as they supported its aims. The result, Soufi holds, was “a community tragically caught in the crossfire of an unprecedented and aberrant type of global war—one without borders and without clearly defined enemies.” Suspicion deepened when the three young men disappeared, two to fall victim to U.S. drone attacks, the other captured and, because born in the United States, now serving a life sentence in a Supermax prison. Soufi observes that during his trial the presiding judge made every apparent effort to avoid conflating Islam at large with its militant practitioners, yet that connection still comes through because of “subtle and often unconscious slippages between what constitutes the radical and moderate Muslim.” Although a greater threat to domestic safety comes from the white supremacist right, Soufi argues, North American Muslims continue to live under a shadow, all the more so, he says, after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
Of more interest as sociology than as a study in the social psychology of terrorism.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781479832262
Page Count: 272
Publisher: New York Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2025
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.
An Egyptian Canadian journalist writes searchingly of this time of war.
“Rules, conventions, morals, reality itself: all exist so long as their existence is convenient to the preservation of power.” So writes El Akkad, who goes on to state that one of the demands of modern power is that those subject to it must imagine that some group of people somewhere are not fully human. El Akkad’s pointed example is Gaza, the current destruction of which, he writes, is causing millions of people around the world to examine the supposedly rules-governed, democratic West and declare, “I want nothing to do with this.” El Akkad, author of the novel American War (2017), discerns hypocrisy and racism in the West’s defense of Ukraine and what he views as indifference toward the Palestinian people. No stranger to war zones himself—El Akkad was a correspondent in Afghanistan and Iraq—he writes with grim matter-of-factness about murdered children, famine, and the deliberate targeting of civilians. With no love for Zionism lost, he offers an equally harsh critique of Hamas, yet another one of the “entities obsessed with violence as an ethos, brutal in their treatment of minority groups who in their view should not exist, and self-decreed to be the true protectors of an entire religion.” Taking a global view, El Akkad, who lives in the U.S., finds almost every government and society wanting, and not least those, he says, that turn away and pretend not to know, behavior that we’ve seen before and that, in the spirit of his title, will one day be explained away until, in the end, it comes down to “a quiet unheard reckoning in the winter of life between the one who said nothing, did nothing, and their own soul.”
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593804148
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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