Reading up on Islam

Christian Century, Jan 16, 2002 by Marcia Z. Nelson

THE ENORMITY of the events of September 11 sparked unprecedented demand for books on Islam and the Middle East. For a while in fall 2001, books about Islam, Osama bin Laden and Afghanistan made bestseller lists, as readers played catch-up by devouring university or specialty press titles by scholarly and policy experts. Books by journalists with experience in the varied cultures of the Muslim world have also offered compelling looks inside parts of the world unknown to most Americans.

Naturally, some of the recent books are more worth reading than others. Some are particularly heavy with agenda-setting in the current volatile political context; some are simply fortunate enough to feature "Taliban" in the title or an eye-catching photo of Osama bin Laden on the cover.

An author who appears to be answering many Americans' questions is Karen Armstrong, a prolific British writer and former nun. Islam: A Short History (Modern Library, 2000) has sold well from the start, and has been on religion best-selling lists and for a time made the general best-selling lists as well. Armstrong's gift lies in mastering detail and in being accessible. She brings depth and breadth through a comparative-religions perspective. Two of her other works, The Battle for God (Ballantine, 2001) and A History of God (Ballantine, 1994), look at the comparative development of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Many more authorities in the field can be found in university-press publishing, where the mission of promoting advancement of knowledge is invariably a less commercial operation, authors less high-profile and accessibility not necessarily a criterion for getting published. Demand, quickened the usual pace of life at some university presses. At Yale University Press, for example, demand ballooned tenfold--from 20,000 sold to 200,000 shipped--for copies of Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia, by Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid, a 20-year veteran of Afghanistan coverage. Yale has accelerated production on Rashid's next work, due in February, on jihad, a term frequently translated as "holy war" but also as "struggle," both translations offering a variety of connotations. Post-September 11 interest prompted sociologist Mark Juergensmeyer to update and write a new preface for his Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence (University of California Press).

While many university presses have one or a few authors with relevant religion or policy specialties, Oxford University Press has developed an extensive publishing program in Islamic studies, anchored by such scholars as John Esposito and Yvonne Haddad, colleagues at the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University. Esposito, author or editor of several encyclopedic publications and a frequently quoted expert, will add to his already lengthy publication list with Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam, scheduled for spring. Haddad's Muslims in the West: From Sojourners to Citizens will also be published in spring, as will a paperback edition of Jihad: The Origin of Holy War in Islam, by Reuven Firestone, an expert on Middle Eastern religions, and Holy War, Holy Peace: How Religion Can Bring Peace to the Middle East, by Marc Gopin, a conflict-resolution specialist at Tufts University who is also an ordained rabbi.

Journalist Geneive Abdo's No God but God: Egypt and the Triumph of Islam (Oxford University Press, 2000) examines the grass-roots revival of Islam in Egypt, a development that is postcolonial, populist, a hybrid of traditionalism and modernity and uniquely national. Abdo's analysis is fresh, nuanced and grounded in extensive interviewing and observation in that country. The Islamic Roots of Democratic Pluralism (Oxford University Press, 2001), by Abdulaziz Sachedina, a professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia and a policy analyst, uncovers a Qur'anic basis for democratic values.

Like Haddad, other scholars have been examining the coming of age of Islam in this country. A collaborator with Haddad in an earlier work, Jane I. Smith of Hartford Seminary, wrote Islam in America (Columbia University Press, 1999), a reflection on the increasing Islamic presence in the contemporary American religious landscape. Sulayman Nyang of Howard University, a former diplomat, brings the perspective of an African-born Muslim to his work on American Islam: Islam in the United States of America (Kazi, 1999). Nyang's work is also a reminder of the importance of Islam among African-Americans.

An earlier generation of Islamic scholars pointed the way toward a deeper understanding of this world religion. Among these pioneers are the late Fazlur Rahman of the University of Chicago and historian Bernard Lewis, the "American patriarch of Islamicists." Edward Said's watershed Orientalism (Vintage paperback, 1979) challenged the way most Western and American intellectuals had viewed Islam.

Scholars who focus on the spirituality of Islam include William Chittick of the State University of New York and Seyyed Hossein Nasr at George Washington University, both of whom have also written extensively about Sufism, the mystical dimension of Islam.