The Trouble with Islam Today - Irshad Manji

A powerful book.  I'm surprised she hasn't been assassinated yet.  A well-reasoned and well-sourced critic of mainstream, and fundamentalist, Islam's controversial positions on human rights, women, other religions, and the role of reason.  It brings up issues of contradictions in the Koran, of historical and social influence on the text, of literalism vs. interpretations.  She also looks at the idea of who controls the interpreting and how that will influence the message.
A good read for anyone who would like to engage in discussion of these issues, whatever religion's position you may want to look at.  Manji pillories the west's tolerance of repressive religious practices on the basis of multiculturalism or cultural sensitivity.
She also discusses the arab warrior tribal culture element in Islam and how it has impoverished several ancient cultural and pluralistic muslim civilizations, from Iran to Baghdad to Spain to Indonesia.
There is also an interesting section on her visit to Israel where she points out that the Israeli/Palestinian relations are not quite as black and white as you could sometimes think.  This in the context of countering the demonization of Israel and Jews in mainstream Islam.  She also makes the point that the leading middle eastern countries have exported their view of the Palestinian issue as part of the religion/culture context  ex. to Indonesia, where they have other social and cultural issues much closer to home.  It would be interesting to look at her position in detail.

Much of her critique of Islam is equally applicable to any other doctrinaire or fundamentalist ideology, whether religious, political, social or economic.


Some quotes:

discussing V. S. Naipaul - (he) "was soon to discover that no colonization has been so thorough as the colonization that had come with the Arab faith..."

"Why, over the past one thousand years, has the entire Arab world translated only as many books as Spain translates every year?  Is it be because the more people know about foreign notions, the more likely they'll be to examine their own?"

- from  Amin Malouf "Traditions deserve to be respected only in so far as they are respectable - that is, exactly in so far as they themselves respect the fundamental rights of men and women."

The 39 Steps - John Buchan 1915

I was reading an article recently about what the journalist considered to be one of Canada'a more successful Governor Generals, John Buchan.  Seems there is a new biography about him.  This caught me by surprise, as I remembered his name from a book I used to read years and years ago at my cousin's house, Greenmantle.  I checked him out on Wikpedia and, lo and behold, he is the author of a book called The 39 Steps, which is also the title of one of Hitchcock's well-known films.  Sure enough, the film is base on Buchan's novel.  What more, it turns out Buchan was a prolific author in his spare time.
Considering it was written in 1915, the book has held up well.  The story line is fast-paced and acceptably engaging.  The other side of the book that held my interest though, is the insight into the mind and way of looking at the world of a member of the British ruling class in the early 20th century.  I suppose what you see is the ideal of the British gentleman from the early 1900s - understated, brave, clever, determined, patriotic, but with the rough edge and "get it done" attitude of a colonial in Britain.
You can also see the prejudices and stereotypes of the time deeply ingrained in the book:  Jews, Germans, the rough but steady and dependable poor of the countryside (perhaps part of the colonial element, or left over romanticism of the 19th century).
I would like to reread Greenmantle and maybe a few of his other better known book.  Also his biography might be interesting - he seems to have led and interesting life.

Garden of the Brave in War - Terence O'Donnell

This is a wonderful book on so many levels.  Foremost, it fills me with nostalgia for a time when the world really was a different place, and travelling really meant experiencing a feeling of complete "dépaysement".  It must have been a wonderful time to travel.  What is amazing is that this other world managed to survive in Iran until the '70s outside of the big cities.  I suppose I experienced a bit of this world the first time I travelled to Turkey, and even those first one or two times a I went to France.  Sad that this is gone - at least in the countries I am interested in visiting.
The picture of Islam that emerges from O'Donnell's book is also fascinating.  It is such a different Islam from the one presented by the post revolution mullahs of Iran.  Tolerant, kind, wise, generous, forgiving, open to the joys and pleasures of the world, and the richness of human emotion.  In a way, this new hard-edged Islam is their version of the Protestant revolution.  I'm not sure it is an improvement.  There is something inhuman in that world view that links it to the new corporate social ethos that seems to be taking over our world - both are joyless, inhuman, impersonal and all about rules and regulations (that work to the institution's benefit.
The epilogue of the book also reveals the seed that has destroyed much of the richness of the world's cultures.  His wonderful traditional garden home is to be destroyed by the landlord to build a pseudo-western suburb for Iran's emerging middle class with cars.
The book is full of wonderful anecdotes with a collection of memorable characters.

Silent House - Orhan Pamuk

As usual, a very dense book.  Pamuk is very good a evoking in detail the lives and thoughts of his characters.  While this book purports to portray the 1980s leading up to the military coup, I don't get the feeling of another time, another place.  The one thing that marks this looking back is the politics between the nationalists and the communists.  But I think this schism between poor traditionalists and westernized elites still goes on (perhaps this is his point?)
The contrast of the character of Fatma Hanım in her dilapidated house on the Marmara with her visiting Istanbul grandchildren, Pamuk does create a sense of how much turkish society has changed in three or four generations, both materially and culturally.  It has been an enormous voyage.

Pamuk has included a wonderful apology for reading and writing in the last page of the book.  The thoughts of Fatma Hanım....
"You can't start out again in life, that's a carriage ride you only take once, but with a book in your hand, no matter how confusing and perplexing it might be, once you've finished it, you can always go back to the beginning; if you like, you can read it through again, in order to figure out what you couldn't understand before, in order to understand life, isn't that so, Fatma?"

Death by Design - Barbara Nadel

Another Ikmen detective mystery by Barbara Nadel, from 2010.  I enjoyed this book - it had some great details about Istanbul and also, as much of the action takes place in London, brings a different perspective to London.  Very topical, as many of her novels are - this time focusing on human trafficking, the fake goods industry, and terrorism.
The best part of this book is the strides she has taken as a writer.  Her style is much tighter and less awkward - there have been earlier books where I have sworn to not read her stuff any more.  She has obviously gotten more skilled as she has gone on.
Worth reading, just pick the more recent ones.

A Delicate Truth - John Le Carré

John Le Carré always manages to stay up to date in his exploring of the shady side of the states that govern us.  This book could be seen as his response to the Iraqi invasion, or the drone missile attacks, where the death of family members and bystanders is just seen as collateral damage.  He also looks at the dangers of handing over national security to private industry, and replacing national armed forces with contract security firms.  Intelligence will be manufactured, operations will go ahead in dubious circumstances - after all, there is money to be made, and it only happens when services are delivered, needed or not, justified or not.

On a larger scale, governments are such suckers for private sector exploitation - you see that in any kind of contract situation, from countries to cities to school boards.  You can say public service is wasteful and inefficient but I'm not sure it's any more expensive than being ripped off by shady public/private contract deals.  And with the public service, at least the wealth is spread around instead of just further adding to the wealth of the 1%, or even the 10%.

Yet again, I am reminded of a quote I read years ago that went something like, "When private business begins to use the public purse as a cash cow, democracy is finished."