A welcome introduction to a faith too little understood by those outside of it.
An adherent’s view of Islam, a religion too easily hijacked for ill political purposes.
London-based Husain (The Islamist: Why I Became an Islamic Fundamentalist, What I Saw Inside, and Why I Left, 2009, etc.), a former member of radical Islam who co-founded Quilliam, a counter-extremism think tank in Britain, has lived and studied in Muslim communities in Syria and Saudi Arabia, where he was stunned to meet young people who “actually celebrated the misfortunes of the West.” This book is a response of sorts. The author writes, sometimes insistently, on what Islam is: a religion that recognizes one God and one prophet—along with holy people common to the Judeo-Christian Bible—while prescribing and proscribing many kinds of behaviors in daily life. All but one book of the Quran, he writes, begin with the formula “In the name of God, the most compassionate, the most merciful,” which, he holds, “is intended to reflect in the behavior of the believer.” Shias and Sunnis, he adds, disagree on many things but hold one Quran to be sacred. Husain offers a careful explication of Sharia justice, which, he holds, “is far more complex and constructive than mere binary prohibitions and permissions”; followed in good faith, it is a systematizing program for ethical behavior. Against those who would take the Quran and Sharia to legitimate violence against non-Muslim people, Husain claims that they have no doctrinal justification. He rails against the kind of fundamentalism that allowed Saudi schoolgirls to burn to death in a fire because they were not wearing headscarves and robes, an act, he holds, that means that the first tenet of Sharia, “preservation of life,” had been violated. The author argues that mainstream Islam must isolate and denounce its enemies from within if it is to successfully resist outside accusations that it is inherently a religion of violence and terrorism.
A welcome introduction to a faith too little understood by those outside of it.Pub Date: July 3, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-63286-639-4
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2018
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
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