Book reviews and abstracts
The Muslim World in Modern South Asia: Power, Authority, and Knowledge, by Francis Robinson, draws together a decade’s worth of the author’s articles, lectures, and reviews. The book covers temporally and geographically broad trends within Muslim responses to the rise of European colonial power and Western capitalist influence, particularly but not only within South Asia. Read more
Continue ReadingMarina Rustow’s deeply absorbing book, The Lost Archive: Traces of a Caliphate in a Cairo Synagogue states its main objective from the outset; namely, to lay to rest the persistent and erroneous notion that the medieval Islamic states of the Middle East were deficient in the art of statecraft. This false notion has been underpinned by an all-pervasive Read more
Continue ReadingDave Davies, guest-host of NPR’s Fresh Air, introduced his guest and subject this way: Muhammad Ali may be the most famous American athlete ever. His life is the subject of books, documentaries and feature films. But our guest, writer Jonathan Eig, says he was surprised to discover no one had ever done a complete, unauthorized Read more
Continue ReadingThe dark heart of West’s Iran obsession A Dangerous Delusion: Why the West Is Wrong About Nuclear Iran, Elliott & Thompson (April, 2013). ISBN-10: 1908739894. ISBN-13: 978-1908739896. Price US$11.58. 112 pages. Reviewed by Peter Jenkins* A Dangerous Delusion: Why the West Is Wrong About Nuclear Iran is the work of one of Britain’s most brilliant Read more
Continue ReadingTayeb El-Hibri. Parable and Politics in Early Islamic History: The Rashidun Caliphs. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010. xi + 471 pp. $60.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-231-15082-8; ISBN 978-0-231-52165-9. Reviewed by Zohar Hadromi-Allouche (Divinity and Religious Studies — University of Aberdeen) This study is dedicated to the historiography of the Rashidun caliphate. El-Hibri states at the Read more
Continue ReadingThe Dead Sea Scrolls are the ancient manuscripts dating back to the time of Jesus that were found between 1947 and 1956 in caves by the Dead Sea. Since they were first discovered, they have been a source of fascination and debate over what they can teach — and have taught — about Judeo-Christian history. Read more
Continue ReadingMuslim Nationalism and the New Turks. By Jenny White. Princeton University Press; 240 pages; $24.95 and £16.95. When Kemal Ataturk built the Turkish republic on the ashes of the vanquished Ottoman empire, he invented along with it a new persona: the Turk, who would be cleansed of what he regarded as Arab and Byzantine Read more
Continue ReadingIs God Happy?: Selected Essays, by Leszek Kolakowski (Author)Basic Books (February 5, 2013). The first biography of Siddhartha, the future Buddha, reveals that for a long time he was entirely unaware of the wretchedness of the human condition. A royal son, he spent his youth in pleasure and luxury, surrounded by music and worldly Read more
Continue ReadingHOLY IGNORANCE: When Religion and Culture Part Ways; By Olivier Roy; Translated by Ros Schwartz.259 pp. Columbia University Press. $27.50 Every winter Fox News, seeking to stir up anger through the land, uncovers evidence of a war on Christmas. Secular humanists ignorant of religion and hostile to its traditions, someone in the studio will Read more
Continue ReadingMegan Kate Nelson. Ruin Nation: Destruction and the American Civil War. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2012. 400 pp. $69.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8203-3397-7; $24.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-8203-4251-1. In an attempt to reconceptualize the destruction caused by the American Civil War “as an imagined state, an act of destruction, and a process of change,” Megan Kate Read more
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