A book on the American Muslim experience that’s brimming with information, although it also misses opportunities to tackle...
Considine (Sociology/Rice Univ.; Islam, Race, and Pluralism in the Pakistani Diaspora, 2017) explores questions and answers about the lives of Muslims in the United States.
As stated in the introduction, this book is part of ABC-CLIO’s Contemporary Debates reference series, each volume of which identifies and addresses “30-40 questions swirling about” a particular topic. What follows is a question-and-answer session concerning the topic of the title: the community of followers of Islam who live in America. Or, more specifically, the book is aimed at addressing present-day controversies surrounding Islamic identity and its place in the pluralist American society. Questions range from the easily quantifiable (“Are Muslims in the United States responsible for the majority of terrorist attacks on American soil?”) to the more abstract (“Are American Muslims happy to be living in the United States?”). By and large, the conclusions are that Muslims have a long history of living in America, that they aren’t more dangerous than any other group, and that an entire industry has sprung up around the culture of Islamophobia. These conclusions are supported by polls (many by Pew Research), various historical citations, and assertions that Islam is a broad topic and “no one Islamic organization or mosque speaks for all American Muslims.” The book makes frequent use of recent events, such as the Trump administration’s attempts at limiting immigration from certain predominantly Muslim countries, and a number of proposals for anti-Sharia laws in the United States. This is a careful study that’s most illuminating when making use of historical details. For example, how many Americans know that a frieze in the U.S. Supreme Court shows an image of someone holding a copy of the Quran? Or that Thomas Jefferson had a personal collection of books on Islam? In contrast, some of the questions on modern issues have obvious answers (such as “Do American Muslims engage in interfaith and intercultural dialogue with non-Islamic religious and cultural communities in American society?”). The portions on Islamophobia, such as “Is Islamophobia on the rise in the United States?” provide information on how prejudiced people scapegoat Muslims. A section on the funding behind some anti-Islam groups will provide readers with some insight, although some of them may wish that the author had gone deeper into the topic. It’s easy to criticize the statements of organizations with names such as “Stop Islamization of America” and to interpret their activities as fearmongering. However, the book doesn’t adequately address the opinions of more respected critics of Islam, such as the popular author Sam Harris. Likewise, a question about why Islamist extremists believe that their thinking is in line with the Quran might have provided more substance than softballs such as “Have American Muslims contributed to the well-being, vitality, and cultural enrichment of the United States?” Although the answer to the latter is clearly yes, the answer to the former is unaddressed here.
A book on the American Muslim experience that’s brimming with information, although it also misses opportunities to tackle some difficult questions.Pub Date: June 30, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4408-6053-9
Page Count: 212
Publisher: ABC-CLIO
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics,...
A provocative analysis of the parallels between Donald Trump’s ascent and the fall of other democracies.
Following the last presidential election, Levitsky (Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America, 2003, etc.) and Ziblatt (Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy, 2017, etc.), both professors of government at Harvard, wrote an op-ed column titled, “Is Donald Trump a Threat to Democracy?” The answer here is a resounding yes, though, as in that column, the authors underscore their belief that the crisis extends well beyond the power won by an outsider whom they consider a demagogue and a liar. “Donald Trump may have accelerated the process, but he didn’t cause it,” they write of the politics-as-warfare mentality. “The weakening of our democratic norms is rooted in extreme partisan polarization—one that extends beyond policy differences into an existential conflict over race and culture.” The authors fault the Republican establishment for failing to stand up to Trump, even if that meant electing his opponent, and they seem almost wistfully nostalgic for the days when power brokers in smoke-filled rooms kept candidacies restricted to a club whose members knew how to play by the rules. Those supporting the candidacy of Bernie Sanders might take as much issue with their prescriptions as Trump followers will. However, the comparisons they draw to how democratic populism paved the way toward tyranny in Peru, Venezuela, Chile, and elsewhere are chilling. Among the warning signs they highlight are the Republican Senate’s refusal to consider Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee as well as Trump’s demonization of political opponents, minorities, and the media. As disturbing as they find the dismantling of Democratic safeguards, Levitsky and Ziblatt suggest that “a broad opposition coalition would have important benefits,” though such a coalition would strike some as a move to the center, a return to politics as usual, and even a pragmatic betrayal of principles.
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics, rather than in the consensus it is not likely to build.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6293-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
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