Hell-bent on keeping us informed, New York Times Book Review editor Sam Tanenhaus, gave over an entire issue to books devoted to Islam. Odd behavior for a guy who’s been slimed as a “noted neocon” (and thus a hater), dontcha think?
Get cracking, dear readers. There will be a test.
The Islam Issue
‘The Suicide of Reason’
By LEE HARRIS
Reviewed by AYAAN HIRSI ALI
Arguing that the West’s “fanaticism of reason” is no match for the fanaticism of radical Islam.
Essay
Reading the Koran
By TARIQ RAMADAN
The Book of all Muslims, Tariq Ramadan writes, can be understood on many levels.
‘The Adventures of Amir Hamza’
By GHALIB LAKHNAVI AND ABDULLAH BILGRAMI
Reviewed by WILLIAM DALRYMPLE
The “Iliad” and “Odyssey” of medieval Persia is presented in a hefty new English translation.
First Chapter ‘Arguing the Just War in Islam’
By JOHN KELSAY
Reviewed by IRSHAD MANJI
A professor of religion traces the thinking behind Islamic holy war.
‘American Crescent’
By HASSAN QAZWINI
Reviewed by RASHID KHALIDI
From his mosque in Michigan, a cleric argues that Muslims can be integrated into national life.
First Chapter ‘Jihad and Jew-Hatred’
By MATTHIAS KÜNTZEL
Reviewed by JEFFREY GOLDBERG
A German scholar argues that Muslim anti-Semitism can be traced to a project of the Nazi Party.
First Chapter Essay
The Clash
By FOUAD AJAMI
I doubted Samuel Huntington when he predicted a struggle between Islam and the West. My mistake.
‘God’s Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe, 570 to 1215′
By DAVID LEVERING LEWIS
Reviewed by ERIC ORMSBY
David Levering Lewis’s history of Arab rule in Spain focuses on its ethic of mutuality.
‘Peace Be Upon You’
By ZACHARY KARABELL
Reviewed by JASON GOODWIN
Muslim rulers, Zachary Karabell says, did not force conversion upon their subjects.
‘Napoleon’s Egypt’
By JUAN COLE
Reviewed by TOM REISS
A historian takes a new look at Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt.
Essay
Beyond the Burka
By LORRAINE ADAMS
Muslim women’s voices are being heard as never before. But which ones?
‘Islamophobia: Making Muslims the Enemy’
By PETER GOTTSCHALK AND GABRIEL GREENBERG
Reviewed by SHIBLEY TELHAMI
A look at American media since 9/11 makes the case that Muslims have been unjustly demonized.
First Chapter Caught in the Ayatollah’s Web
Reviewed by SARAH WILDMAN
Memoirs by Marina Nemat and Zarah Ghahramani, two women who survived political prison in Iran 20 years apart.
Schools are dropping the Holocaust from history lessons to avoid offending Muslim pupils, a Government backed study has revealed.It found some teachers are reluctant to cover the atrocity for fear of upsetting students whose beliefs include Holocaust denial.
Population 14,500, with a Norman castle and an Anglican church established in 1122, Clitheroe is tucked away in Lancashire County in the north. People here liked to think they represented a last barrier to the mosques that have become features in the surrounding industrial towns.
So long to the Sceptered Isle:
This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,—
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.
—William Shakespeare, Richard II
The editor of the NYT’s Metro section, that’s who, and she/he is holding it close to the vest, which is kind of puzzling. In an otherwise admirable report, which gives us a rare look behind the scenes into the “West African diaspora” in New York City where a fire claimed the lives of eight children and a woman this week, a salient question is left unanswered. Never mind that this defies common sense. It also violates one of the cardinal rules of storytelling: don’t leave any threads hanging.
But as so often happens, tragedy also exposes an immigrant community’s secrets. There is the Malians’ practice of taking more than one wife, transplanted by some from village compounds in the hills of western Mali to crowded apartments in the Bronx. There is their often-faltering climb up the entrepreneurial ladder, with attendant business failures and bankruptcies. And there is the tricky business of immigration status: Many Malians are here illegally even as they raise children who become the newest generation of New Yorkers.
I’ll cut to the chase. The “salient question” left unanswered is: What “cultural” practice is it that allows polygamy? Why, it’s Islam. But that’s never mentioned once in this piece—although one interviewee specifically mentions the role of her religion in the mix of issues being discussed [e.a.]:
Polygamy is common in Mali and throughout West Africa. But it is illegal in the United States, and it can bar immigrants from gaining permanent legal residency or citizenship. Many West Africans are uncomfortable talking about the practice with an outsider, particularly so soon after the tragic fire.
But many West Africans say that Mr. Magassa’s arrangement is a subterranean feature of life here, particularly for older men who can afford it. At a spacious African hair-braiding salon on 125th Street, Aminata Dia, the Senegalese owner, consulted with her husband before talking about the practice to a reporter. She said men traditionally bring the first wife first, but of late many prefer to bring the youngest.
“I wasn’t surprised,” Ms. Dia said. “It’s our religion that allows men to have four wives. But two wives in the same house, it’s not so common — usually they have one wife abroad and one here.”
A fierce argument erupted about whether this was too volatile an issue to talk about with an outsider. “All women suffer from polygamy, but our religion says we should not speak,” said an employee, Aminata Fatou, 29. “One can’t do away with that.”
Countered Ms. Dia: “If every woman shuts her mouth, she is complicit. I’m against polygamy — it’s bad for the woman, the man and the children.”
For the record, this “insider” is saying exactly the same thing that Ayaan Hirsi Ali says (albeit more pointedly and loudly). I don’t hear anyone calling her a “native informer” or an “Enlightenment fundamentalist.”
Furthermore, Ms. Dia has enough common sense to fill an entire immigrant community:
Then she added a coda: “If you leave your country, you have to come with the good things, not bring the bad things with you.”
It’s people like Ms. Dia who have turned America into the successfully-bublingbubbling-over melting pot it is. Long may the pot continue to melt us.
