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Title: Islam, Fundamentalism, and the Betrayal of Tradition (Perennial Philosophy Series) by Joseph E.B. Lumbard ISBN: 0-941532-60-7 Publisher: World Wisdom Pub. Date: 10 October, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (4 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: An assessment of the conflict between Islam and the West
Comment:
This book, Islam, Fundamentalism, and the Betrayal of Tradition, examines the foundations of the Muslim faith and the historic conflict between Islam and the West, which can be traced clear to the Crusades and beyond. The book is composed of several essays by young Muslim scholars who understand and were brought up in the Western world, and are probably best qualified to speak to the subject.
The editor, Joseph Lumbard, founder of the Islamic Research Institute and himself a Muslim is currently Chair of Islamic Studies at the University of Cairo. He is a specialist in Sufiism, which is the respected mystical branch of Islam.
These essays present contextual analyses of of the spiritual aspects of Islam, and provide the spiritual bases for its political dimensions, and, introspectively, examine some fallacies which have led to political errors and erroneous beliefs. Using the Qu'ran as the authority, errors on both the side of Islamic and Western cultures are examined.
This appears to be a learned book, examining many misconceptions about Islam by Westerners dating back to the Crusades, as well as misinterpretations on the part of many Muslims, especially when it comes to Jihads, terrorism and hatred of the West.
Westerners these days, accustomed to television images of screaming crowds of young Muslim men, women and even children, waving AK-47s in the air and frequently firing same, and howling hate while waving bloody, burning American flags sometimes while dragging the bodies of Americans through the street, may perhaps be forgiven for a less than charitable view if Islam. Especially considering the many past acts of violence taken against innocent Westerners, including recent beheadings, torture and rapine of kidnap victims.
The Arabic world has shown a hatred for the Jewish community in Israel almost unparalleled in history, especially since the Jewish people returned to their ancient homeland after the horrors of the Second World War and carved out a nation, and in the process displacing some Arabic peoples who considered the land theirs.
But probably every square yard of habitable land on earth has a history of multiple owners, from whom it has been taken at one time or another, often by force. That, and religious differences, are probably the two greatest causes of conflict between human beings.
Virtually all religions, to people who believe otherwise, can be shown to look ridiculous in their core beliefs--none, perhaps, any more ridiculous than any other on their face.
Differences are visceral, often violent, and seem insurmountable. It will be the rare human being, indeed, who will tolerate the infidel spitting on his belief system and holy places.
For the person who wishes to learn about the Muslim's true belief system, this may be a valuable book. For the average American, brought up in their own faith, the book's usefulness may be dubious, since curiousity about the beliefs of those who have sworn to kill you is less important than useful methods of defense against their acts of terrorism, and sorting out those who mean you no harm as opposed to those who hate you. All else may fall into the realm of the academic. The niceties of doctrinal differences between Shiites and Sunnis, etc., are easily lost when you are busily dodging bullets from both sides, and especially when the differences are in interpretations of a book in which you do not believe in the first place.
This is a scholarly book, coming at a time when the world is on fire and the combatants care very little about the subject matter anymore, or for that matter about the scholars who are writing on the subject.
Joseph (Joe) Pierre, USN (Ret)
author of Handguns and Freedom...their care and maintenance
and other books.
Rating: 5
Summary: Suspicious of Islamophobia¿then read differently!
Comment: In the climate of the current widely orchestrated Islamophobic assessment, this book is a powerfully fresh set of articles to bring to bear against those who are ignorant of Islam's true existence. Throughout the chapters I was confronted/reassured with numerous arresting counter-facts. In the article The Myth of Militant Islam I found out that the Quranic advice "Slay them wheresoever you find them" is located within the very same sentence as "and turn them out wherever they have turned you out," interpreted by the vast majority of historic and current Islamic scholars to refer not to Christians and Jews of the Book but specifically to those polytheist Meccans who cruelly harried the first few adherents to the message of Muhammad. Several other commonly bantered-about Quranic phrases are shown in their true and respectful light. In the article The Decline of Knowledge and the Rise of Ideology in the Modern Islamic World the editor masterfully emphasizes the great degree of effort which traditional Islam gave in wedding knowledge to religious doctrine and action. Historically and even currently, Muslim sufi circles waxed and waned in popularity and influence within the Islamic world. This historic knowledge-spirituality synthesis has faded somewhat, to be replaced by various accretions of discarded Western ideologies reconstituted by liberalizing Muslim modernists and doctrinaire (stringent) Muslim reformists in the form of pseudo-Islamic theological and philosophical writings. Thus, what began as the anti-religious Renaissance and Enlightenment attack against Christianity's religious and intellectual synthesis has been partially ingested into Muslim writings. Stringent reformist Muslims, in a confused reaction to being confrontated with Western science and secularism, now struggle side by side with the Muslim modernists as they move toward some future undescribed goal, both paradoxically unaware of their accord in accepting the secular Western scientific paradigm that eventually runs counter to the body of religious ethics and laws which they as Muslims yet try to preserve. In the article A Traditional Islamic Response to the Rise of Modernism one is alerted to the figure of Maulana Thanvi, an Indian Sufi born in 1863, who chastised certain modernist Islamic thinkers by using an Islamic set of spiritually intellectual arguments to expose the erroneous assumptions of invading Enlightenment ideologies such as naturalism, rationalism, empiricism and scientism. In contrast to the Christian West's willful divorce of knowledge from religion and the subsequent kowtowing to modernism, there exists in today's Islam a surprising amount of intellectual integration within the religious universe, drawing upon the vast store of Islamically integrated thought and wisdom. In the article Recollecting the Spirit of Jihad the true and long understood meaning of this term, maliciously abused now by several sides, is nobly resurrected to its deeply sacred and enviable conceptualization. Historic and recent examples of tolerant Muslim warriors in Spain, Algeria, Dagestan and Afghanistan involving inter- and intra-religious dimensions are recounted, making it apt be speak of a Christian chivalry mirrored in the Islamic world. The article The Muslim World and Globalization: Modernity and the Roots of Conflict alerts one to the catastrophic misjudgment by today's most popular policy-making circles in presuming that Islamic people are supposed to simply throw garlands of flowers around forced "instant democratization," which ends up being a cover for, and heavily dependent upon, capitalistic economies of historically problematic performance. This most broad-scoped article excoriates globalization, spells out the inherent ethical conflicts between modern and traditional Islamic economic systems, and makes dubious the claim that Western-style democracy will make Islamic life better, noting that traditional and current Islamic societal structures already exemplify respectable democratic-like characteristics and universal ethical norms.
In these articles, the realization unfolds that the presence of that body of the Muslim population who are neither "fundamentalist" nor moderate/modernist is in actuality the vast majority, and they are properly called traditional orthodox mainstream Muslims. This category is holistic: it excludes intellectually repulsed "fundamentalists" and religiously-embarrased moderates. What is simply not true is the simpleton claim made on this week's Sunday morning TV weekend roundup that 95% of all Muslims are "moderate traditional Muslims...."
In short, I came to this collection of articles as a life-long American Muslim witness to the besmirchment of Islam that is currently being attempted. Like-minded and otherwise interested readers will find a repletion of alternative arguments, in several topics of interest, to bring to bear against the current spectacle of slanted and uninformed print and electronic media. The picture of past and present portrayed by this book certainly paints a more substantial and hopeful base from which to redirect the current Islamic debates. Bravo!
Rating: 4
Summary: Different from the usual fare, with rare insights into Islam
Comment: There are many books today which deal with the so-called crisis in the Islamic world, from Bernard Lewis' "What Went Wrong?" which takes a narrow and often absurdly one-sided view to the West-Islam problem, to books by Muslims trying to explain away their real shortcomings by blaming everyone but themselves. This book does neither. To my knowledge the perspective that both sides should be embracing a more deep-rooted and traditional practice and understanding of Islam has only appeared in perhaps a few articles in the Western press and in one or two recent books. The rest of the literature out there seems to be caught between either a complete dilution of Islam in favor of modernity or a mindless rejection of all things Western in favor of a cult of zealous legalism.
I reccommend this book for two reasons. First, it starts from a point of view of pragmatism that is refreshing in such an emotional time. A prime example is Ansary's article analyzing Bin Laden's strategy using game theory, which is original and extremely persuasive. Second, it takes into account the vast ocean of Islamic civilization and the intellectual and spiritual history to which it gave rise. Both sides of the issue of Islamic fundamentalism have almost completely insulated themselves from the great tradition of scholarship and traditional spirituality. For example, both Jerry Falwell and Osama bin Laden seem to agree that the Koran allows cart blanche to carry out war as one sees fit (if one is a Muslim). Dakake's article makes it clear that only a total ignoramus or a delusional maniac could accept such an interpretation in light of the history of just war theory in Islam.
In general, one finds insights about Islam and the present situation that it is difficult to find elsewhere. You will not find rehashing of the same tired analysis we are pelted with on a daily basis in our media. Agree or not, the points of view presented here are important and are, to my mind, very persuasive.
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Title: Journeys East (The Library of Perennial Philosophy) by Harry Oldmeadow ISBN: 0941532577 Publisher: World Wisdom Pub. Date: June, 2004 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Science and the Myth of Progress (Perennial Philosophy) by Merhdad Zarandi, Mehrdad M. Zarandi, Giovanni Monastra ISBN: 094153247X Publisher: World Wisdom Books Pub. Date: 01 February, 2004 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: The Fullness of God (Writings of Frithjof Schuon) by James Cutsinger ISBN: 0941532585 Publisher: World Wisdom Pub. Date: 07 July, 2003 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: The Essential Ananda K. Coomaraswamy (The Perennial Philosophy Series) by Rama Coomaraswamy ISBN: 0941532461 Publisher: World Wisdom Pub. Date: 10 July, 2003 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
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Title: Against the Modern World: Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century by Mark J. Sedgwick ISBN: 0195152972 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 May, 2004 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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