bloodyfool0's review against another edition
4.0
This book was very interesting, but I thought it could be a little more controversial. A lot has happened since its publication in 1982 and this book seems to have alluded to some of the more recent events. You somehow felt something was simmering and waiting to boil.
The main concept I found was there was a little spark waiting to happen to get everyone together to organise some mass movement for global indoctrination. A religious imperialism of sorts.
The main concept I found was there was a little spark waiting to happen to get everyone together to organise some mass movement for global indoctrination. A religious imperialism of sorts.
mkesten's review against another edition
5.0
Before Christopher Hitchens, V.S. Naipal wrote the great de-bunker of organized religion. This is it.
idrees2022's review against another edition
3.0
It is easy to dislike Naipaul. His misanthrophy, his Islamophobia, his class prejudice, his palpable unease with his own identity. They could all make him a thoroughly unpleasant companion. Yet there is something quite refreshing about a writer who can be so oblivious to reader sensitivities, so indifferent to the demands of political correctness. Such a disposition could fit a boor. But no boor could write prose as fine as Naipaul's. In the end, despite the unconcealed prejudices, despite the dogmatic insistence on presenting Islam as the religion of the sword, Naipaul remains compulsively readable because there are few writers who have Naipaul's facility with the English language. Don't look into this book for insights; because there are none. Read it for the prose; because this side of Hemingway, you'd not have seen it put to better use.
homes's review
4.0
Amazing! I've never been a big non-fiction reader, but my husband and I were discussing Islam and he suggested this book. Completely engrossing and quite an interesting perspective, to see how the Muslim world was back in the late 1970s as compared to today.
johnaggreyodera's review
3.0
Think of something exceedingly well written, a sort of travelogue that doesn’t deal in the profound experiences that the writer had, as many travelogues usually do, but rather in asking locals mundane - though meaningful- questions about their lives, their beliefs, their justifications for their beliefs. Now imagine, however, that because the author of this travelogue needs a point for this exercise- you don’t just go around asking people questions without a point after all - he creates one, and the point he creates is to understand Islam, broadly considered, not as we outsiders know it from our general readings and prejudices, but as the believers believe it and live it. If you imagine all that, you get this book.
At that point you may start asking yourself a few questions: is there something you can understand about Islam qua Islam, simply by dwelling among (and not even among, as Naipaul seems to spend most of his time in five star western hotel chains like the Intercontinental) and speaking to those who profess to believe it, and in different countries, with different sects, just for six months? Is it at all possible, in your efforts to understand this amorphous thing called Islam, to abandon your western prejudices- both about certain religions and about certain people in certain areas of the world , your desire to make every thought and belief submit to the rigor of you logic? Does this exercise even make sense?
Naipaul became an important voice by shattering the dominant idea (at the time) that everything wrong with post colonial societies was the fault of the colonizers. Fair enough. But, at least in this book, when he travels through post revolutionary Iran, then on to Pakistan, Malaysia and finally Indonesia, he comes off as looking down on the formerly colonized (though he does have remarkable, and I think correct, observations about the politics of renunciation by colonized people who have experienced the west). I’m told by a friend he does this in many of his other books as well (I haven’t read these ones yet) - shitting on India in “India, a wounded civilization ”, and having his Conrad moment of encountering the savage Africans in “A Bend in the River”. That doesn’t sit very well with me, and I’m starting to see why he was such a divisive figure, but I look forward to reading these other works.
At that point you may start asking yourself a few questions: is there something you can understand about Islam qua Islam, simply by dwelling among (and not even among, as Naipaul seems to spend most of his time in five star western hotel chains like the Intercontinental) and speaking to those who profess to believe it, and in different countries, with different sects, just for six months? Is it at all possible, in your efforts to understand this amorphous thing called Islam, to abandon your western prejudices- both about certain religions and about certain people in certain areas of the world , your desire to make every thought and belief submit to the rigor of you logic? Does this exercise even make sense?
Naipaul became an important voice by shattering the dominant idea (at the time) that everything wrong with post colonial societies was the fault of the colonizers. Fair enough. But, at least in this book, when he travels through post revolutionary Iran, then on to Pakistan, Malaysia and finally Indonesia, he comes off as looking down on the formerly colonized (though he does have remarkable, and I think correct, observations about the politics of renunciation by colonized people who have experienced the west). I’m told by a friend he does this in many of his other books as well (I haven’t read these ones yet) - shitting on India in “India, a wounded civilization ”, and having his Conrad moment of encountering the savage Africans in “A Bend in the River”. That doesn’t sit very well with me, and I’m starting to see why he was such a divisive figure, but I look forward to reading these other works.
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