Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples

In my point of view, this book is a Classic. First because its prose, its writing quality. Naipaul is a great writer, a master who can describe richly what he sees, what he thinks and what he experiences - as few writers could. He moves quickly from a single detail of daily life to a big panorama of history. He can be subtle, and he is also sharp. Several times he is ironical, and most of all his writing is fluid and simple, unregarding the complexity of his themes.       A second thing is the very particular situation of this book.  I had never read a book in which the same author travels to countries he had been 20 years before. Besides, for us of the West, it's an entry into the islamic world. Through his words, we have a very clear look over Iran, Pakistan, Malasia and Indonesia social and political experiences. And what results those systems brought.           Another great thing about this book is how Naipaul is a keen observer of culture. The past, present and the future are linked. Waves of subtle transformations and assimilations sometimes occur very very slowly. Sometimes abrupt facts take place. The people who talk to Naipaul are real, and they tell him their "own truth" through many different ways: their lives, behaviors, way of speaking, gestures. Every little sign counts, and fortunately Naipaul is there. Those who want to complete Naipaul's journey should also read "Among the Believers", 1979. Great narratives by a master, these books bring a lot of reflections about culture, religion, politics, and our values. Everyone should read! I'm glad I did.

This is a patchwork of biographies, often told through a translator, created by an unemotional and unentangled observer. It covers the author's 1995 travels through Indonesia, Iran, Pakistan, and Malaysia. These biographies come together into a unified theme of captivation by the beauty and idealism of the Koran, the search for heaven in the afterlife and for paradise on earth. But death and destruction is found too often. This is a powerful writing, and certain sections burn in the readers mind. For example:The Indonesian Imaddudin's response to kindness shown to him in the United States: "God loves me very much." A strange twist on a beautiful thought. The context was such that his meaning was clear. While it was the Americans who were kind to him, he owes them nothing. It was, after all, God who loves him and provided for him. Imaduddin is now free to dismiss all kindness shown to him. I guess this gives him license to hate and destroy folks, no matter how good they were to him. And it does not seem to leave any room for compromise, for people of different views living together peaceably.One of Naipaul's interviewees blatantly states that if a Muslim sees an un-Islamic practice, you must stop it by force and ". . .this tradition gives the Muslim license to act violently." Then there was Mr. Jaffrey, the news writer, agitating for a Islamic state in Iran for a number of years. This finally comes about when the Shah is overthrown. Mr. Jaffrey, on being told he has an appointment with the "student" rebels the next morning, immediately flees the country. I can see how certain Muslim or mideastern readers might hate this book. Much of this writing is concerned with the need for freedom from fear and want (conspicuously absent for many in most of these countries); the tyranny of religion; family abandonment justified by religion and polygamy; obsession with following rules to the exclusion of common sense; abuse of the unprotected, and so on. I had thought that the Koran forbid the killing of one Muslim by another, but that is rampant throughout the book. In particular, on the section about Iran, Naipaul refers to the shortage of husbands, because so many young men had been killed in the war with Iraq. Also one can sense through the biographies that there are different motivations for following Islam. These include forceful coercion, the necessity in order to conduct commerce, a source of hope, sense of community and being part of group, the need to earn a living and so on. While Naipaul covers the positive sides of Islam, which include comfort, a sense of hope, and a sense of instant community and oneness with a huge group of others, the most interesting and memorable material is also the most negative. Naipaul's prologue is especially powerful, in which he describes the ". . .crossover from old beliefs, earth religions . . to the revealed religions - Christianity and Islam . .. . like a cultural big bang, the steady grind

Naipaul's essential thesis here is not complex, but it does have the ability to offend. Naipaul comes from the largely Western school of separation of Church and State. In other words, he believes that a healthy, complete human culture is always complemented by religion, but should NEVER be dominated by it. He illustrates this point by examining the lives and psychologies of individuals in the so-called "conquered" Islamic states, with a particular emphasis on suggesting that religious dogma creates an incomplete and unhealthy human condition in its defenders and practitioners. In this way, Naipaul's thesis is similar to that presented by Milosz in THE CAPTIVE MIND: Only when freed from dogmatic captivity is the human mind capable of transcending our most basic appetites. If you are comfortable with that idea you will probably like this book. If you are uncomfortable with that thought, you're probably going to hate it.

VS Naipaul helps us walk though the psychological landscape of the madness and despair of abandoned societies. The end of the Cold War and the retreat of Colonialism have set some countries adrift, searching for meaning. The people of the dark are dimly conscious of the societies of the light. They fail to see themselves for what they are and the world as it is. They opt for magical explanation, for the irrational. The discourse of the people is religious; the actions are sociopathological. Perhaps, hints Naipaul, Islam, has always been the religion of psychopathic societies. In the name of Islam, warriors are beheaded, women and children are enslaved, land is annexed and treasure carried away. Today when societies and ethnic groups become irrelevant, the individual and the community are no longer ratified. Collectively some turn to the one religion that allows them to submerge their (unimportant) being in a new collective identity and express their rage. Naipaul nails the motivating forces behind Islamic terrorism: marginalization, ethnic and racial hatred, poverty,unemployment,powerlessness, a dim understanding of civilization and a blazing resentment of abandonment. It is odious to live under colonial masters. It is far worse to see them walk away indifferent to those they leave behind. Islam fulfills the search for relevance, It is a purely destructive tool for redirecting and refocusing self hatred and contempt. What Islam does not do is give individuals and groups the means to deal with reality- to improve their own condition and the condition of their nation in peacetime. Under Islam, mankind engages in unrelenting warfare against the infidel of the moment. The focus is lost when the battle ends so the battle must never end. The religion feeds on blood, murder, ignorance and chaos.

Keeping in mind the endless "mea-culpa" books that detail Colonial Christianity's impact on native cultures in say, Africa and Latin America, I find it refreshing to see an author of Naipaul's stature take on the Islamic Arab Empire and the tragic consequences of its own colonial past.What Naipaul depicts in this book and its companion volume, "Among the Believers," is nothing less than a very thorough "wiping out" of vibrant local cultures by a religion/political system that holds that everything before its arrival is from "the time of ignorance". (Never mind the fact that pre-Islamic Iran and Pakistan were fabulous empires that fathered ancient cultures far more sophisticated than anything produced by their Arab conquerors.) Naipaul is relentless in hammering home this point through meticulously detailed observations. The most damning parts of these two books (I recommend buying both) are the contrasts that Naipaul draws between modern-day, non-Islamic India and modern-day, Islamic Pakistan -- India "ever expanding" and Pakistan "ever contracting" -- despite the fact that both share common races, histories, problems and cultures. If you read the current news about Pakistan and its precipitous slippage into religious obscurantism, you realize just how prescient Naipaul's observations have proven themselves to be. India, for all its overcrowding and poverty, is currently experiencing a high-tech boom and gaining world-wide respect for its vibrant film industry, Bollywood. Meanwhile, Pakistan's big "contribution" of the past few years to the world stage has been the production of an "Islamic nuclear bomb". No wonder this book makes Muslims uncomfortable. Thanks, Naipaul, for having the courage to write these books while living in the Salman Rushdie era.