A cogent argument demonstrating that a knowledgeable awareness of the rich dynamics that drive societies will better help...
Without the establishment of Islam, writes former CIA official Fuller (New Turkish Republic: Turkey As a Pivotal State in the Muslim World, 2007, etc.), the religion of the East would predominately still be Eastern Orthodox Christianity, and probably as hostile to the West as it was before the fall of Constantinople.
In focusing all its rage against Islam in the pursuit of the eradication of terrorism, the West has lost sight of the key role of “geopolitical considerations of power” over theological differences. Islamism, rather than Islam, has become just one of many ideological vehicles employed against Western interventionism, imperialism and colonialism, and the rise of its new forms of resistance—fundamentalism and terrorism—is as predictable as, say, the Reformation grievances against the Catholic Church. The author provides a broad, far-flung survey of historical currents that have fed the West-East divide, namely how the early centuries of peaceful Christian conversion in the Middle East gave way to orthodoxy and the organization of a state structure in the form of the Byzantine Empire, which broke with Rome and vigorously suppressed “a smorgasbord of heresies.” The relatively recent religion on the scene, Islam, united dissonant tribal entities of the region and opened Islam to non-Arabs, an organic development that Fuller views as “an important process of fusion.” The author considers the Crusades as an expansionist move by the West, in response to external marauding forces, and demonstrates how the breakaway elements in the Protestant Reformation “opened the door” to more liberal (or literal) interpretations of orthodoxy, in much the same way that modern Islamist movements have broken away from (or adhered more strictly to) the Islamic party line. Fuller offers a useful survey of Muslim communities in Russia, India and China, and looks at how Islam—rather than Arab nationalism, for example—has become today’s tool in resistance to the West.
A cogent argument demonstrating that a knowledgeable awareness of the rich dynamics that drive societies will better help diffuse tensions.Pub Date: Aug. 11, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-316-04119-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2010
A provocative critique of the Jansenist movement and of its celebrated proponent Blaise Pascal, from internationally renowned scholar Kolakowski (The Alienation of Reason, 1968, etc.; Committee on Social Thought/Univ. of Chicago). Jansenism, the powerful 17th-century heresy condemned by Rome, has often been called the Catholic form of Calvinism. Inspired by the writings of Bishop Cornelius Jansen of Utrecht, the Jansenists claimed to be orthodox disciples of St. Augustine and taught that salvation was gratuitous in a way that ruled out any human cooperation. Since those whom God had freely predestined would inevitably be saved, Jesus Christ died only for the elect; all others would be justly condemned to eternal torments, irrespective of whether they were good or bad, including unbaptized babies. Human nature was totally corrupted by sin, especially original sin. Kolakowski gives us a detailed account, with copious quotations, both of St. Augustine and of the positions of Jansen and his followers, and he guides us through the central questions of the debate. He devotes the second half of his study to the writings of Pascal, whose profound pessimism he sees as embodying the Jansenists' world-denying ideals. The arts, free intellectual inquiry, and even hugging one's children had no place in what Kolakowski calls Pascal's religion of unhappiness. The author rarely refers to other studies of this great controversy. He is surely being malicious when he holds that Rome's rejection of Jansenism was a compromise with the world and a de facto abandonment of the Church's tradition, since he presents the latter in an overly Augustinian form, choosing to ignore, for example, the Eastern Fathers, Aquinas, and the basic doctrine that the human person, endowed with free will, is made in the image of God. Brilliantly cynical presentation of an unpopular but still influential religious outlook.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-226-45051-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Univ. of Chicago
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
Vivid travelogue combines with a polemic that Christianity was originally a Gnostic offshoot of Zoroastrianism in this intriguing, but highly partisan, attempt to discover the significance of the mysterious Wise Men. Fascinated by Marco Polo's statement that he saw the tombs of the Magi in the Persian city of Sava, screenwriter and journalist Roberts (A River in the Desert, not reviewed, etc.) traces their footsteps in an adventure that begins in Khamenei's Tehran and ends, after several twists and turns, in Bethlehem. Accompanied by Reza, his scatologically loquacious Iranian guide, our author's first surprise is to discover in Sava ruins that actually correspond with Polo's wondrous description. Roberts balances the narrative of his journey to Bethlehem with uncensored accounts of Reza's vulgarities—he learned English on an American campus in the '60s. En route, Roberts also takes gratuitous swipes at Jesus Christ, the New Testament, and ``the Church of Rome,'' declaring that the Magi at Christ's birth were Zoroastrians and that Roman orthodoxy, based on Paul's replacing gnosis with faith, headed a conspiracy that obliterated all record of gnostic Christianity until the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls. Our author hears of links between Christianity and Zoroastrianism in his encounters in the Islamic holy city of Qom, among Zoroastrians at Yazd, and in Iraq, where he discovers some Mandaeans, a Gnostic sect that he believes was the missing link between Zoroastrianism and true Christianity. We hear of their worship of (a pardoned) Satan and of how Jesus escaped crucifixion to spend his subsequent life with the Magi. Roberts produces no real evidence for his thesis, and even when he speaks of the Dead Sea scrolls, he is offering us simply his interpretation, with very few references, of highly esoteric material. Frequently hilarious, Roberts, as he himself admits, is presenting a history that fits his own needs.
Pub Date: Dec. 5, 1995
ISBN: 1-57322-012-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1995
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