by Irshad Manji ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 14, 2011
Exceptional reimagining of Islam.
Manji takes readers outside the boxes of “moderation” and “multi-culturalism” to boldly tackle the problems with modern Islam.
In the wake of her 2005 book The Trouble with Islam Today and PBS documentary Faith Without Fear, the author looks toward an optimistic fix for Islam’s woes. She finds this remedy in the ancient Islamic practice of ijtihad, a “tradition of dissenting, reasoning, and reinterpreting.” Focusing on seven simple yet challenging lessons she has learned about reform, Manji urges readers—whether Muslim or not—to challenge those who hide behind social constructions like “moderation,” which perpetuate a culture of violence and intolerance. She makes it clear that Islam must be separated from Arab culture, which idolizes family and collective honor above individual integrity. Going further, however, Manji calls for a reinterpretation of Islam itself by Muslims to bring readings of the Qur’an into a 21st-century context, decrying the Muslim fear of outside cultures while ignoring Islam’s own severe cultural problems. Muslims, she writes, must stop having “high defenses against the Other and low expectations of ourselves.” She also calls upon non-Muslims to stop wringing their hands over respect for another culture and to remember that certain things, such as honor killings, wife beating, etc., are simply and universally wrong. Throughout the book, the author quotes from e-mail communications with critics and allies alike, many of which echo the resounding hatred and striking fear that many Muslims live with daily. Her writing is emotive, penetrating and sassy. Readers of all backgrounds should be struck by her assertion that, “A sovereign Creator isn’t threatened by our self-knowledge; only the Creator’s uptight gatekeepers are.”
Exceptional reimagining of Islam.Pub Date: June 14, 2011
ISBN: 9781451645200
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: June 6, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2011
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by Albert Camus ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 26, 1955
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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by Albert Camus ; translated by Justin O'Brien & Sandra Smith
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by Stephen Batchelor ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 18, 2020
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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