Earnest, passionate, and sure to ignite controversy, though it does so with a range of Islamic sources.
From debut author Med, fiery polemic criticizing the Quran, the Prophet Muhammad, and the rise of Islam.
Med, who was raised Muslim, says, “No matter how many times people tried to explain things to me so I would understand, I did not easily accept those explanations, as they were illogical and I found many contradictions amongst the Quran’s verses.” In this extensive tome, he offers his research on “the ayat of the holy Islamic Quran and the Hadiths by Prophet Muhammad,” offering various criticisms of such works. Maintaining a heated tone throughout, he presents many examples on topics ranging from the role of women—particularly their oppression “under the shadow of Islam”—to the questionable prohibition of alcohol to the prophet’s controversial youngest wife, Aisha: “I personally believe that if the Prophet of Islam hadn’t forcefully claimed Aisha when she was only a child, then today’s young Muslim girls would never have to cover their hair and faces to protect themselves from those who follow in the footsteps of Muhammad.” Though the author hopes his book “contributes to the opening of doors which people thought were locked,” Muslims are sure to be offended in these 600-plus pages of honest, personal criticism—perhaps the kind that only a former adherent can muster. Med doesn’t pull any punches. At times, he addresses readers directly and offers specific directions toward further proof, as when he says, “If anybody wishes to know how the Muslims slaughtered non-Muslims and looted their property, money, and women, then they should read the Islamic sources and books written by al-Tabari and Ibn Hisham about the raid of Hunayn to learn more than I have written in this book!” Readers unfamiliar with the life of the prophet will learn a great deal from intriguing historical nuggets, such as a discussion of battles ordered by Muhammad. However, these lessons come with a highly skeptical tone: “What kind of God is this Allah who only wants four months of peace for humanity?”
Earnest, passionate, and sure to ignite controversy, though it does so with a range of Islamic sources.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2014
ISBN: 978-1496986030
Page Count: 606
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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