A confusing, advanced guide for those interested in an esoteric interpretation of Islam.
A mystical interpretation of the Quran and the nature of Islam.
The author, who practices the mystical Sufi tradition of Islam, leads the reader through his complex metaphysical interpretation of religion as described in the Quran, or as he writes, “Because I believe the book is not so much a ‘Book of God’s Commandments’ as it is a ‘Book of Secrets,’ which, if not READ properly, can leave one in severe deprivation.” This interpretation relies on a special understanding of the use of the letter B in the Quran’s text, based on the position of that letter in the original Arabic. The author encourages the reader to “read” (generally in all capital letters) the Quran in order to gain the same understanding. Grasping the author’s message requires familiarity with the Quran and related concepts—many of the terms the author uses, such as “rasul,” are untranslated or unexplained. His interpretation appears to be that God, as explained in the Quran, is less a deity than a concept that humans can incorporate, and those who treat God as a separate being are missing the point of the religion. The details of this interpretation are explained in part through metaphor, as when the author contrasts the open-platform aspect of the Linux operating system to the closed nature of Windows; in part through advances in neuroscience and other forms of research; and via the author’s own analysis of verses from the Quran, from which he concludes that “Man (not humanoid) has been created as the vicegerent of earth. The only way he can actualize this and attain the level of ‘the most dignified of all creation’ is if he becomes worthy of the principle of ‘vicegerency.’ ” Exclamation points appear frequently throughout the book’s pages, as does bold text. Many of the footnotes direct the reader to the author’s other works. Each chapter ends with a date and location, suggesting that the book is a collection of essays written between 2002 and 2005. The text has been translated into English. This guide looks to be most useful for those who already have a solid grounding in the Quran and Sufi beliefs and want to expand their understanding.
A confusing, advanced guide for those interested in an esoteric interpretation of Islam.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2012
ISBN: 978-0615725246
Page Count: 284
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.
A light-speed tour of (mostly) Western poetry, from the 4,000-year-old Gilgamesh to the work of Australian poet Les Murray, who died in 2019.
In the latest entry in the publisher’s Little Histories series, Carey, an emeritus professor at Oxford whose books include What Good Are the Arts? and The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books, offers a quick definition of poetry—“relates to language as music relates to noise. It is language made special”—before diving in to poetry’s vast history. In most chapters, the author deals with only a few writers, but as the narrative progresses, he finds himself forced to deal with far more than a handful. In his chapter on 20th-century political poets, for example, he talks about 14 writers in seven pages. Carey displays a determination to inform us about who the best poets were—and what their best poems were. The word “greatest” appears continually; Chaucer was “the greatest medieval English poet,” and Langston Hughes was “the greatest male poet” of the Harlem Renaissance. For readers who need a refresher—or suggestions for the nightstand—Carey provides the best-known names and the most celebrated poems, including Paradise Lost (about which the author has written extensively), “Kubla Khan,” “Ozymandias,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, which “changed the course of English poetry.” Carey explains some poetic technique (Hopkins’ “sprung rhythm”) and pauses occasionally to provide autobiographical tidbits—e.g., John Masefield, who wrote the famous “Sea Fever,” “hated the sea.” We learn, as well, about the sexuality of some poets (Auden was bisexual), and, especially later on, Carey discusses the demons that drove some of them, Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath among them. Refreshingly, he includes many women in the volume—all the way back to Sappho—and has especially kind words for Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, who share a chapter.
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-23222-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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