An important work for those seeking to understand—and defend—Islam.
Can a book that is “above time and beyond history” be the subject of a biography? Certain folk of a militant bent may say no, but Lawrence (Islamic Studies/Duke Univ.) bravely offers a sympathetic, even ecumenical, portrait of Islam’s foundational text.
According to Lawrence, the Qur’an, whose name means “recitation,” “sounds better spoken than read silently” and is “an oral book that is also a scripture,” a call to prayer that is the essence of prayer itself. The text—which Muslims believe the archangel Gabriel recited to the prophet Muhammad in the Arabian desert 14 centuries ago—declares itself to be the voice of the true religion (“The true religion with God is Islam”). It also declares, Lawrence holds, that peace (salam) is Islam’s overarching priority, which renders problematic the interpretation of jihad as holy war waged literally against nonbelievers. Lawrence ventures that militant Muslims are a small but vocal minority whose emphasis on confrontation obscures the faith. He goes on to examine the life of the merchant Muhammad, whose first preaching of Islam earned him the wrath of his neighbors in Mecca and prompted his flight to Medina, from which the new religion spread. He offers character sketches of early interpreters of the Qur’an such as Tabari, an immensely learned man who “would still have been one of the most important Muslim scholars of all time” had he confined himself to it instead of writing 30 books on all manner of subjects; and he gently twits Western misappropriations of the Sufi tradition (“Deepak Chopra, Demi Moore and even Madonna have claimed to connect with the Whirling Dervish”). Most usefully—and courageously—he upholds the Muslim tradition against another misappropriation, that of fundamentalist militants such as Osama bin Laden who take the Qur’an to be not a set of moral directives but a mandate for terror.
An important work for those seeking to understand—and defend—Islam.Pub Date: Feb. 10, 2007
ISBN: 0-87113-951-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2006
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
