Volume 29, Number 9 · May 27, 1982
Conjuring with Islam
By Clifford Geertz
Muslim Society
by Ernest Gellner
Cambridge University Press, 267 pp., $39.50
Loyalty and Leadership in an Early Islamic Society
by Roy P. Mottahedeh
Princeton University Press, 209 pp., $18.50
On Understanding Islam: Selected Studies
by Wilfred Cantwell Smith
Mouton (Hawthorne, New York), 351 pp., DM 105(approx. $52.50)
Islam and Revolution: Writings and Declarations of Imam Khomeini
translated and annotated by Hamid Algar
Mizan Press, 464 pp., $19.95
Studies on Islam
translated and edited by Merlin L. Swartz
Oxford University Press, 306 pp., $17.50; $7.95 (paper)
Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World
by Edward W. Said
Pantheon, 186 pp., $10.95; $3.95 (paper)
Islam in the Modern World and Other Studies
by Elie Kedourie
Holt Rinehart and Winston/New Republic, 332 pp., $17.95
Hardly a day goes by when someone among us doesn't ask in print, 'What is Islam, and how much does it matter?' OPEC, Israel, and the hostage crisis have powerfully concentrated our minds on the subject. Journalists, scholars, politicians, apologists, even now and then an errant literary figure on a polemical holiday, address themselves to the meaning of the jihad or the doctrine of the Hidden Imam. What was once the province of a handful of people who knew Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, sometimes along with Urdu and Malay, or who happened to be posted to Beau Geste settings, is now almost as open to general discussion as Reaganomics or the cultural significance of television. Like Japanese work habits, Muslim passions are suddenly something about which it is necessary to have views.
Review, 4408 words
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