Book Reviews from Middle East Quarterly Fall 2005

Middle East Quarterly, Fall 2005
http://www.meforum.org/article/787

Anglo-Saxon Perceptions of the Islamic World. By Katharine Scarfe Beckett.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 276 pp. $65.

Beckett studies the nearly five centuries from the rise of an Islamic
policy (A.D. 622) to the first Crusade (A.D. 1096), looking in detail at
the wisps and traces of English knowledge of, contact with, and attitudes
toward Muslims. The results are highly interesting.

Who knew that Bishop Georgius of Ostia, a papal legate to England,
reported in 786 to the pope on two synods he had attended and included
this decree: "That no ecclesiastic shall dare to consume foodstuffs in
secret, unless on account of very great illness, since it is hypocrisy
and a Saracen practice"? Or that Offa, the king of Mercia (a region of
the Midlands, north of London) during the years 757-96 had a gold piece
struck in his name, now available for view at the British Museum, which
bore, as Beckett puts it, "a somewhat bungled Arabic inscription on
obverse and reverse in imitation of an Islamic dinar"?

In fleshing out Dark Ages' reactions to the new faith, Beckett very
usefully establishes the primitive base from which the English-speaking
peoples even today ultimately draw their views. She tells about the
unique English traveler's account to the Middle East dating from this era
(that of Arculf); tallies the dinars found in such places as Eastborne,
St. Leonards-on-Sea, London, Oxford, Croydon, and Bridgnorth; and totes
up the Middle Eastern imports, such as pepper, incense, and bronze bowls.
She finds that a "continuing network of trade and diplomatic links"
connected western Christendom to the Muslim countries.

As for attitudes, they were not just uninformed but static. Beckett notes
that initial responses to Islam were shaped by pre-Islamic writings,
especially those of St. Jerome (c. A.D. 340-420), on Arabs, Saracens,
Ismaelites, and other easterners. This prolonged influence resulted from
a pronounced lack of curiosity on the part of Anglo-Saxons and most other
Europeans.

To end on a jarringly contemporary note: dismayingly, the influence of
Edward Said has reached the point that his theories about Western views
of Muslims now reach even to the early medieval period; Beckett devotes
page after page to dealing with his theories. Happily, she has the
confidence and integrity (in her words) "to some extent" to dispute those
theories.

Daniel Pipes

Building a Successful Palestinian State. By The Rand Palestinian State
Study Team. 407 pp. $35, paper. The Arc: A Formal Structure for a
Palestinian State. By Doug Suisman, Steven N. Simon, and Glenn E.
Robinson. 93 pp. plus DVD. $32.50, paper. Helping a Palestinian State
Succeed: Key Findings. By RAND. Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation,
2005. 33 pp. in English, 34 pp. in Arabic. $12.00, paper.

Planners and development experts suffer from a deserved reputation for
technocratic top-downism that ignores the wishes of people and
sociocultural context; they are also known for utopian visions
disconnected from practical reality. Seldom has that stereotype been more
fully fulfilled than in the three complementary RAND studies about a
Palestinian state.

Most striking is how the study treats Palestinians as subjects to be
studied rather than as actors to participate in the creation of their own
state. Blissfully divorced from any discussion about Palestinian social
history or the kinds of communities its people have created, the authors
happily catalogue advantages and disadvantages of different approaches to
developing Palestinian cities. The education chapter, to be fair, does
provide a decent account of the existing system, how it evolved, and what
Palestinians want, but it is the exception that proves the rule.

The analysis also has a head-in-the-clouds character. Chapter after
chapter run through the authors' thoughts to create their model society
for Palestinians without betraying the slightest hint of awareness that
fifty years' experience with international aid has shown the disastrous
effect of such an approach. The report makes only a slight passing
references to the extraordinary amounts of aid pumped into the
Palestinian territories after the 1993 Oslo accords—aid that led to
corruption and social distortions which undermined the Palestinian
Authority's ability to function effectively. The RAND authors would
exacerbate the central problem of Palestinian society—a refusal to take
responsibility for itself but instead blaming outsiders for all problems
and expecting foreigners to rescue them. Also,
a-Cadillac-rather-than-Chevy-approach pervades the study. The authors'
point of reference seems to be the infrastructure and facilities
characteristic of Europe and North America, not those of low-income,
developing countries.

Finally, the three volumes share the central organizing image of an "arc"
formed by a high-speed railroad linking the major population areas of
Gaza and the West Bank. There is the minor problem, as the authors note
in passing, that roads rather than rail would be used for most freight
shipments, for emergency services, and for those who can afford cars
(including tourists, dignitaries, and the growing middle class the study
envisages). A good road would connect the Palestinian urban areas at a
much more modest cost than the billions the authors propose to pour into
a railroad, which could quickly turn into a money-losing inefficient
public enterprise of the kind which plagues many developing countries.

Patrick Clawson

The Culture of Islam: Changing Aspects of Contemporary Muslim Life. By
Lawrence Rosen. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2002.
230 pp. $24 ($17, paper).

Drawing upon his experiences as an anthropologist in Morocco, Rosen
analyzes several facets of modern Muslim society. The elusive thesis of
his essays collected here would seem to be that all politics in the
Middle East is personal. Power may grow out of the barrel of a gun but is
only deemed legitimate when the leader takes into account the primacy of
social relationships, especially tribal units.

The chapter on tribes might have been worthwhile reading for U.S. military
commanders heading to Iraq in 2003, in that Rosen rejects the idea that
tribes are but a stage in political evolution and contends that they can
coexist within other types of political systems. While one might find
reason for optimism for democracy in Iraq from his view that Middle
Eastern rulers are "more like paramount chieftainships than like states"
because they "get their power from below—from other chiefs," Rosen also
argues that "each leader is by definition legitimate if he succeeds in …
grasp[ing] the reins of power." Might, in other words, does make right.

In this vein, Rosen holds that Daniel Pipes was wrong to assert in his
1983 book, In the Path of God: Islam and Political Power that Islamic
expectations for good governance are set so high that no Muslim
government is ever truly legitimate.[1] Instead, Rosen sticks to his
assertion, acquired in Morocco, that simply seizing power legitimates a
ruler.

Rosen's interests take some essays in the direction of strictly cultural
issues, such as Moroccans' view of corruption and mixed marriages (a
chapter better suited to a legal textbook). Other of his chapters look
more broadly at current issues, such as his views on the continuing
relevance of Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses for having allowed a kernel
of doubt to nose its way under the smugly righteous ideological tents of
ulema and mullahs. Rosen's optimism about a kinder, gentler Islam
developing in Europe seems anachronistic after the 2004 Madrid
explosions, the ritualistic murder of Theo Van Gogh, and the 2005 London
attacks. His contention that "deep cultural change is not going on" in
the Islamic world remains to be seen, but it stands out for
counter-intuitive boldness. Overall, while The Culture of Islam contains
thought-provoking nuggets, finding them amidst the opaque dust of
anthropological verbiage makes it often more trouble than it is worth.

Timothy R. Furnish
Georgia Perimeter College

Freedom of Religion, Apostasy and Islam. By Abdullah Saeed and Hassan
Saeed. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2004. 227 pp. $99.95 ($29.95, paper).

The apostate is a Muslim who leaves Islam—or who is accused of being an
enemy of Islam. The rights and wrongs of this punishment are the subject
of the Saeeds' book. What had once been just an internal issue has become
an international one since Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's edict in 1989
declaring Salman Rushdie, then living in London, an apostate. That said,
the issue still has its center in the majority-Muslim countries. For
example, Muslim intellectuals accused of apostasy in Egypt alone include
Farag Fuda (murdered in 1992), Nagib Mahfouz (stabbed in the neck in
1994), Nasr Hamid Abu Zaid (ordered to divorce his wife in 1995), the
feminist leader Nawal al-Saadawy, who has received death threats—and this
author, who was fired from his position at Al-Azhar University in 1987 and
briefly jailed.

Freedom of Religion, Apostasy and Islam superficially reviews the debate
on apostasy in Muslim history. It takes up such matters as the
contradiction between apostasy laws and the freedom of belief; apostasy
and Muslim thinkers; apostasy law and its potential for misuse; reasons
for apostasy; understanding the fear of apostasy among Muslims; and the
need to rethink apostasy laws.

Unfortunately, the authors ignored the major books written on apostasy in
Islam, the ones that explore its historical roots. These include Murder
in the Name of Allah by Hazrat Mizra Tahir Ahmed[2]; Killing the
Apostate, a Crime Forbidden in Islam, in Arabic, by the Syrian writer
Muhammad Muneer Adelby; and my own Penalty of Apostasy, Historical and
Fundamental Study,[3] in Arabic and English.

Another problem: 9-11 dangerously spread the issue of apostasy by
providing great support to the fanatic elements in Muslim society. This
development implies a need to focus on the role of the Saudi state and
its Wahhabi dogma in activating and supporting the punishment for
apostasy and its role in the Islamist war against the West and against
Muslim freethinkers. This means looking at such topics as the role of
on-line websites in urging the punishment of apostates and discussing
ways to end the application of this penalty as a core religious reform.
But the Saeeds do not take up these vitally important topics.

Ahmed Subhy Mansour
Alexandria, Va.

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