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In my years of teaching Islamic civilization and courses in religion and violence, I have found few truly outstanding resources that I could recommend, without reservation, for wide readership--that are accessible without being simplistic. Below are some that I have found consistently useful.
1) Topic: The Taliban. Book: Ahmed Rashid, Taliban: Fundamentalism, Oil, and Militant Islam in Central Asia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000). The authoritative work, readable, and accurate. Every informed citizen will wish to read it.
2) Topic Fundamentalist Terrorism. Book: Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God (University of California Press, 1998). An examination of how fringe elements of fundamentalist groups move toward terrorism, and the communities of support that allow the terrorist to exist and feel fulfilled in his actions: with readable case studies of terrorists acting in the name of Buddhism-Hinduism, Islam (Bin Laden associates and others), Judaism (Baruch Goldstein and the assassin of Prime Minister Rabin) and radical Sikhs in India. I in showing the similarities across religious tradition in the particular combination of social anger, sense of alienation, and fundamentalist reading of scriptures in the mind of these terrorists.
3) Topic: Religion and Violence. Books: Regina Schwartz, Curse of Cain:The Violent Legacy of Monotheism (University of Chicago Press, 1997); Peter Partner, God of Battles: Holy Wars of Christianity and Islam (Princeton University Press, 1998). Excellent studies, readable, informed, and fair.
4) Topic: The Abrahamic Faiths: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Book: Karen Armstrong, A History of God (Knopf, 1994). A classic.
5) Topic: Islamic Civilization. Resource: The 2001 vhs PBS production, shown recently in the U.S., Canada, Britain, and Australia entitled: Islam: Empire of Faith, widely regarded as the best available appreciative view of the origins of Islam and the flowering of Islamic civilization. Includes interviews with scholars, accurate re-enactments of historical events, a clear narrative spoken by Ben Kingsley, and the best video images ever produced the Umayyad Mosque of Damascus, the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, and the Alhambra. Available (at around $29.95) from the PBS.org. (Disclaimer, I was a consultant and appear in a few interview segments, but I make no royalties or profits from the sales of this film).
6) Topic: Human and Cultural World of Islam. On 10/19/01, The MPR (Minnesota Public Radio) the program First Person: Speaking of Faith featured The Spirit of Islam with Omid Safi and Seemi Bushra Ghazi. MPR is making the show available to all NPR stations nationwide. The show is available on the web for readaudio listening or download at: http://www.firstperson.org. Whether a local NPR station picks it up depends on public interest. Your calls to your local NPR affiliate, asking with the Spirit of Islamprogram on First Person: Speaking of Faith will help demonstrate public interest.
Safi discusses Islamic culture, poetry, mysticism, and music (with recitations and songs). Ghazi speaks of the meaning of Qur'an recitation for her as a woman (with an example Ghazi's own beautiful Qur'an recitation); veiling; her prayer shawl for Qur'an recitation or "portable tabernacle"; and how Urdu poetry has consoled her in the current situation. Both speak of their lives as Muslim Americans and backgrounds (in Iran for Omid and in India and Saudi Arabia for Seemi) with personal immediacy. This is the human face of Islam missed or unknown in the non-Muslim world.
7) Topic: The Hajj, Islam, and Social Justice. Book: Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X. The chapter on the Hajj (the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca) is one of the most sensitive discussions of the Hajj written (chapter 17, pp. 325-346). It is immediately accessible to American audiences, either read alone or with the entire book. It offers key insights into ritual, sacred time, and sacred space, as well as the relationship of Islam to the black liberation movement in the U.S. One caution: although Malcolm sensed that as a public personality he was often being treated in a special way, he did not always sense the precise political agenda behind certain of his hosts in Saudi Arabia.
8) Ramadan [videorecording] : A Fast of Faith / produced, written and directed by Ra'up McGee (Publisher: Princeton, NJ) distributed by Films for the Humanities & Sciences, 1999, c1997: see the web site at www.films.com (in my view, the Ramadan film is by far the best film from this outlet. I have found the others inconsistent). Ramadan is "A stunning, sensitive, lyrical entry into the world of Islamic life, through the lens of a family and through interactions throughout the local society, which in this case is Indonesia." An accessible yet deep entry into a central aspect of Islamic religion and life. Both Malcolm X and the Ramadan film also off insight into the Islamic ritual prayer or "Salah" and the ritual ablutions made before it.
9) On The Qur'an. When non-Muslims pick up a translation of the Qur'an, they are frequently soon discouraged. After a few pages, one is plunged into a complex mix of politics, history, law, mysticism, prophets, and apocalypse -- all seemingly bunched together. How can one begin to understand it without a mastery of early Islamic history?
The answer is that Muslims do not read the Qur'an this way either. For historical reasons, the Qur'an is arranged in reverse order, with the larger and often the last revelations at the beginning, those steeped in historical, military, and political details. The first revelations, on the fundamental Qur'anic values on the meaning of life and the search for justice, come at the end of the written Qur'an. In addition, Muslims learn the Qur'an in Arabic, and no English translation has managed to bring across the tones of tenderness, intimacy, and meditation within the Qur'an. When those tones are lost, a stiff language and the impression of a wrathful God is often the impression given -- not at all what Muslims hear when they hear the Qur'an recited.
Over the past 18 years, I have developed a method that allows those who do not know Arabic to encounter a more accurate sense of the Qur'an. In Approaching the Qur'an: the Early Revelations (White Cloud Press, 2001; 1-800-380-8286 or http://www.whitecloudpress.com), translations and commentaries are present of the first revelations, those learned by Muslims first and recited most often, along with an introduction to the life of Muhammad and early Islamic history, and a CD with sound charts that allow the listener to hear Qur'anic recitation and follow the meaning with interlinear translations.
10) Overviews of Islam. Two overviews work well when used together. Huston's Smith's chapter on Islam in his Religions of the World offers an accessible, philosophical overview that brings most readers directly into the tradition. As a balance to Smith, the Matthew Gordon's chapter in The Illustrated Guide to World Religions, ed. by Michael Coogan (Oxford University Press, 1998), offers fine view into the sights, sounds, rituals, and textures of Islamic life and history, while still presenting clear and accurate narrative. Not to be confused with another of the same title that is superficial: make sure it is the Oxford, Coogan edited volume.
11) Topic: Palestinians. The most sensitive treatment of the experience of Palestinians can be found in novels of Ghassan Kanafani: Men in the Sun and other stories (London: Heinemann Educational; Washington D.C.: Three Continents Press, 1978), translated by Hilary Kirkpatrick; and Kanafani, Palestine's Children: Returning to Haifa & Other Stories, translated by Barbara Harlow (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2000). These novels humanize the Palestinian, in part because they refuse to demonize those on the other side, and in part because the life of refugee in its humanity is brought forth, without political positioning.
12) Topic: Iran. Roy Mottahedeh, The Mantle of the Prophet: Religion and Politics in Iran (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985). A lucid and sweeping portrait of Iran in revolution and in history, culture, and humanity.
13) Topic: Women in Islam. Susan Schaefer Davis, Patience and Power: Women's Lives in a Moroccan Village, 1983), Farzaneh Milani, Veils & Words: The Emerging Voices of Iranian Women Writers; Leila Ahmed, Women and Gender in Islam.
14) Topic Islam in Morocco, in Marrakesh, and women's life and and spirituality in an Islamic old city,: Elizabeth Warnock Fernea, A Street in Marrakesh (Garden City, N.Y. : Anchor Press, 1980). A luminous book.
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If you have comments on these resources or reports on how helpful (or not) they were, please send them to me at: msells@haverford.edu