by Mustafa Akyol ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 18, 2011
A Turkish journalist recounts the history and fluctuations of Islam with grace and style.
Akyol charts the course of the early tribes of Islam, fixed and unevolving, to the strict regimes and terrorist struggles of modern times. Laying the foundation with Muhammad’s vision of the Qur’an and the subsequent battles it has inspired between traditionalists and rationalists, the author investigates a religion rooted deeply in individual freedoms and pragmatism. Islam, as espoused by the Qur’an, granted rights to women and slaves and was once anachronistically progressive; however unorthodox his views, Muhammad struggled and persevered for the expansion of the Islamic faith. As centuries passed, the Qur'an and its core message of intellectualism and individualism gave way to political interests—as is the case in most faiths. Akyol's account of the permutations and adaptations of Islam exhibit the strength of the message at its heart and the strong force conspiring to oppress and rewrite its fundamental message. Informative at every turn, the author lifts the veil on the beautiful truths and harsh realities of a faith at war with itself, and ever-evolving in its interpretations and executions. Akyol ends with a call for a more secularized Arab world (perhaps underway now as revolutions spring through the region) as a way to preserve the true legacy of Muhammad's teachings and propel Islam out from the shadows. A full-color view of the spectrum of Islam, a religion too often regarded in black-and-white terms.
Pub Date: July 18, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-393-07086-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: July 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 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 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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