An expert on national security challenges stereotypes of Islamic militancy and the threat it poses.
Leiken (Why Nicaragua Vanished, 2003, etc.) analyzes social policies affecting Muslim immigrant communities in France, the U.K. and Germany, and how these have affected recruitment to Islamic jihadist organizations. Rejecting a one-size-fits-all categorization of Islam, he suggests that it is the “postmigrant” second-generation of young men who provide potential recruits for terrorist organizations in Europe and the United States, especially as they face a crisis of identity in a time of economic stagnation. The author draws the conclusion that the apparently socially repressive policies adopted by the French have proven to be most successful in dealing with a possible threat of terrorism, while the British face a serious problem. Migrants from Algeria are encouraged to view themselves as French and are expected to assimilate French culture. Leiken believes that the 2005 street riots were fueled by economic conditions rather than ideology. In contrast, the terrorist attack on the British subway system was ideologically motivated. The author attributes the rise of Islamic terrorism in the U.K. to British multiculturism. Leaders in Muslim communities received generous government subsidies and were expected to act as mediators for the Muslim population, which was not encouraged to assimilate. Migrant laborers generally maintain close ties to their native communities, which their children lack, leaving them vulnerable to terrorist recruitment. By offering apprenticeship programs and vocational training, Germans provided them a road to economic, if not social, integration and an alternative to radicalism. Leiken provides a historical, ethnic and socioeconomic context that identifies important differences as opposed to empty generalities. Both well written and researched—a valuable contribution to an ongoing discussion.
Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-19-532897-4
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2011
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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