A lively, succinct, nonpolemical study that will offer much thought for discussion.
A sound, accessible argument for why returning to the mixed-faith communities living among each other in the Ottoman model might just save the Middle East.
British Middle East journalist Pelham (A New Muslim Order, 2008, etc.) traces the current crisis of violent, xenophobic sectarianism in the region to the series of forced population transfers and displacements carried out through the 20th century, most critically from the fall of the ethnically diverse Ottoman Empire to the creation of Israel and Pakistan. In the Ottoman Empire, writes the author, the sultans had learned how their strength derived from the heady mix of faith communities, living among each other, their houses of faith side by side. This borderless fluidity of groups—encompassing Arabs, Turks, Armenians, Greeks, Kurds, Jews, Christians, and others—provided a paradigm of diversity and tolerance, subsequently destroyed with the rise of the secular Young Turks and the accompanying attributes of a Turkish nation-state—i.e., nationalism, defense of the land, and service in the military. A kind of “cultural homogenization” inevitably followed, involving forced displacement of people and even genocide, a pattern that was repeated in the creation of Israel and Pakistan and is now occurring again in the establishment of the Islamic State group—a brand-new caliphate. Through his firsthand examples, Pelham explores the richness that has been lost in these lands once teeming with ethnic and religious pluralism—e.g., the formerly Arab towns of Safed and Acre, before the Jewish battle cry of “redeeming the land” produced the sanctioned, barren segregation. Moreover, the rise of militant radicalism has violently cleaved the two sects of Islam, Shia and Sunni, with both battling for assumption of power claimed over centuries. However, Pelham does not see only doom but rather a resurgence of pluralism as a natural, human response given the chance for peaceable community.
A lively, succinct, nonpolemical study that will offer much thought for discussion.Pub Date: April 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9909763-4-9
Page Count: 174
Publisher: Columbia Global Reports
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2016
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
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
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
