A clear, concise, and thoughtful introduction to Islam.
An exploration of Islamic beliefs and history that aims to challenge American Islamophobia.
Debut author Slocum, a former Christian missionary to Kazakhstan, writes that he was horrified at ignorant depictions of Muslims in American media after the 9/11 attacks. During his years as a missionary, he “never changed anyone’s mind to become a believer in the Bible,” he says, but his newfound Muslim friends left an indelible mark on his own life—particularly, the fact that their culture prized hospitality toward strangers. The book begins by subverting popular American conceptions of Sharia law by rooting it in social justice, centered on protecting the poor and weak. Similarly, Islam’s “greater jihad,” he says, is not a literal holy war (a term first coined by Christian Crusaders) but rather “the internal struggle of living a life that is pleasing to God.” The book’s middle chapters offer a survey of Islamic history from Muhammad through the present day, highlighting both the wonders of the Islamic Golden Age and the horrors of European colonialism. To Slocum, the birth of the “dark blight” of Wahhabism in the 18th century marked a decisive turning point. Although the moderate Muslim majority rejected this absolutist ideology, he says, it gained traction in Saudi Arabia at the same approximate time that the West undergirded a Saudi monarchy linked with Wahhabism. Central to the book’s analysis of radical Islam is the notion that it’s a force of the West’s own making, from their support of the mujahedeen in Afghanistan to their installation of a brutal monarch in Iran. In doing so, Slocum is particularly deft at challenging the tropes that Islamic radicals hate American freedom or that Islam is an inherently violent religion. Although many in the West tend to associate Islam with Arabs, this book highlights not only the faith’s ideological diversity, from Sunnis to Shias to Ahmadis, but also Muslims’ ethnic diversity; only about 10% of the world’s Muslims hail from Arabic nations. Of course, none of this will be new to Islamic scholars or historians of the Middle East, but to many Americans who are unfamiliar with the topic, this is a first-rate primer.
A clear, concise, and thoughtful introduction to Islam.Pub Date: July 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-9986838-6-7
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Top Reads Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The doctrine of the sanctity of human life is in deep trouble, claims Australian philospher Singer (The Expanding Circle: Ethics and Sociobiology, 1981, etc.), who gives his own clear ideas of what should replace it in this decidedly provocative work. With crisp, dramatic tales involving brain-dead bodies, anencephalic infants, people in persistent vegetative states or with agonizing terminal illnesses, and other now-familiar hospital scenarios, Singer asserts that modern medical practice has become incompatible with a belief in the equal value of all human life. He argues that the ethical problems such situations pose would be simplified if we would only abandon our outdated thinking about life and death. He presents five commandments of what he calls the old ethic and suggests how they might be rewritten. In his scheme, the first, "Treat all human life as of equal worth," becomes "Recognize that the worth of human life varies"; the second, "Never intentionally take innocent human life," becomes "Take responsibility for the consequences of your actions." The third and fourth express Singer's views that people have the right to end their own lives and that unwanted children should not be brought into the world. All of these will trigger outrage in various quarters, but perhaps most provocative is his fifth revision: "Treat all human life as always more precious than any nonhuman life" becomes "Do not discriminate on the basis of species." A founder of the Animal Rights Movement, Singer argues that the right to life properly belongs not to Homo sapiens but to persons, by which he means those beings that possess self-awareness. In this view, an embryo or someone in an irreversible coma is clearly not a person, but a gorilla or a baboon is. Singer can't quite figure out how to regard newborn humans, but he gives infanticide a serious look before backing off. By going to the very core of our beliefs about life, Singer has created just about as controversial a book as possible.
Pub Date: April 1, 1995
ISBN: 0312144016
Page Count: 288
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
American pragmatism and delight in clashing values characterize this well-informed survey of contemporary moral issues. Tivnan (The Lobby: Jewish Political Power and American Foreign Policy, 1987) sees Americans as increasingly unsure about what they believe, as the moral authority of ethnic and religious traditions plays less of a role in our society. He attempts to assemble the best arguments on all sides of the current heated debates on abortion, suicide, euthanasia, the death penalty, and affirmative action. Devoting a separate chapter to each, he begins with a brief history of the issue concerned, follows with a sampler of the arguments for and against, and concludes with his own opinion. This format makes for stimulating reading. On assisted suicide we learn of ancient philosophers' very nuanced views for and against, see how these were synthesized by Christian thinkers such as Aquinas, then observe the question blown open again by the opposing views of Kant and Hume before we reach the contemporary controversy involving the Hemlock Society and Dr. Jack Kevorkian. Here, as in most cases, Tivnan takes a liberal stance. On the fiercely contested topic of abortion, he gives an excellent summary of pro- life and pro-choice views, including feminists on both sides, and holds that abortion is the sometimes justifiable taking of a human (but pre-personal) life. Tivnan occasionally fudges on thorny philosophical issues (e.g., he equates martyrdom with suicide) and seems content with a merely legal or social stance. He celebrates American diversity and suggests that beyond tolerance there are no objective moral values; his heroes are Isaiah Berlin, John Dewey, and Richard Rorty. For Tivnan, truth is simply the way a society describes how it determines what is right. He does not ask how this would apply in Germany of the 1930s or in contemporary China, where human rights are dismissed as a purely Western cultural phenomenon. Provocative reading, whatever your point of view.
Pub Date: April 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-671-74708-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
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