A well-intentioned but unsuccessful attempt to frame Islam through the lives of women practitioners.
Life histories of famed Muslim women across the centuries.
Kamaly (Islamic Studies/Hartford Seminary; God and Man in Tehran: Contending Visions of the Divine From the Qajars to the Islamic Republic, 2018) sets out to prove that “in the past and today women have shaped many aspects of Islam and deserve a more central place in the historical narrative.” To that end, the author introduces 21 Muslim women from the sixth century to the present age. With a few exceptions, however, his choices are not the most convincing as comprising a “history of Islam.” The author begins with three women who were indeed tightly connected to the beginnings of Islam: Khadija, the famed wife of the Prophet Muhammad; his daughter, Fatima; and his later child-bride, Aisha. After these three minibiographies, Kamaly focuses on a string of women rulers, in chronological order, from places as diverse as modern-day Iran, Morocco, and Indonesia. Though some of the stories are intriguing, and most make for worthwhile reading, only one or two of the women have had a significant impact on Islam. Most are female rulers who happened to be Muslim. Readers must wait until the text reaches the 19th century before encountering a woman who was not a ruler or of the ruling class, leaving a void regarding what it meant to be an average Muslim woman through most of history. Even most of the modern women Kamaly profiles tell little about the story of Islam but instead just happen to be Muslim—e.g., architect Zaha Hadid and mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani. The author also tends to understate misogyny in modern Islam: “The situation of women in most contemporary Muslim-majority countries today…remains far from ideal.” Since Kamaly concentrates on early Muslim political figures, many readers will be disappointed that such groundbreaking figures as Benazir Bhutto are left off the list.
A well-intentioned but unsuccessful attempt to frame Islam through the lives of women practitioners.Pub Date: March 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-78607-643-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Oneworld Publications
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
The author’s sincere sermon—at times analytical, at times hortatory—remains a hopeful one.
New York Times columnist Brooks (The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character and Achievement, 2011, etc.) returns with another volume that walks the thin line between self-help and cultural criticism.
Sandwiched between his introduction and conclusion are eight chapters that profile exemplars (Samuel Johnson and Michel de Montaigne are textual roommates) whose lives can, in Brooks’ view, show us the light. Given the author’s conservative bent in his column, readers may be surprised to discover that his cast includes some notable leftists, including Frances Perkins, Dorothy Day, and A. Philip Randolph. (Also included are Gens. Eisenhower and Marshall, Augustine, and George Eliot.) Throughout the book, Brooks’ pattern is fairly consistent: he sketches each individual’s life, highlighting struggles won and weaknesses overcome (or not), and extracts lessons for the rest of us. In general, he celebrates hard work, humility, self-effacement, and devotion to a true vocation. Early in his text, he adapts the “Adam I and Adam II” construction from the work of Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, Adam I being the more external, career-driven human, Adam II the one who “wants to have a serene inner character.” At times, this veers near the Devil Bugs Bunny and Angel Bugs that sit on the cartoon character’s shoulders at critical moments. Brooks liberally seasons the narrative with many allusions to history, philosophy, and literature. Viktor Frankl, Edgar Allan Poe, Paul Tillich, William and Henry James, Matthew Arnold, Virginia Woolf—these are but a few who pop up. Although Brooks goes after the selfie generation, he does so in a fairly nuanced way, noting that it was really the World War II Greatest Generation who started the ball rolling. He is careful to emphasize that no one—even those he profiles—is anywhere near flawless.
The author’s sincere sermon—at times analytical, at times hortatory—remains a hopeful one.Pub Date: April 21, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9325-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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