Category Archives: Books You Should Read

In the steps of Ibn Battuta

Archaeology and Antiquities, Architecture, Books You Should Read, China, Film and Video, Literature, Morocco, Scholars, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, YouTube Watch


Mackintosh-Smith in China

One of the most celebrated Arab travelers was the 14th century Ibn Battuta. For a book on the travels of Ibn Battuta, Timothy Mackintosh-Smith literally followed in the footsteps that the Arab savant had taken some seven centuries earlier. In addition to the book, a documentary film was made. An excerpt of the film on Tim’s experience int he Chinese city of Zaytun is available on Youtube and well worth watching. Other Youtube excerpts are on an Ibn Battuta shopping mall in Dubai and on Turkey. Vimeo provides access to the entire first part of the three-part series. For more information on the work of Mackintosh-Smith, check out his website. An earlier documentary on the English Sheikh and the Arab Gentleman by Bader Ben Hirsi is available in its entirely on Youtube.

Humans without Gods

Bible and Holy Land, Books You Should Read, Ethics, Islam and Christianity, Judaism


Theobald von Oer, The Weimar Court of the Muses (1860)

by Anouar Majid. Tingis Redux, August 7, 2013

For many years now, I have shared my utter amazement at how human beings living in the 20th and 21st centuries could still believe that the gods of the Bible and the Koran are as real as the computer or mobile device in their hand, the cars they drive, or the many people, animals, or trees they see and touch. When I ask people if God exists, many say yes. But when I ask them how they got to know Him (God in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition is unmistakably male), they quote their holy books as evidence. I have yet to meet someone who had a direct encounter with God; our knowledge of the Almighty relies heavily on our faith that Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed had exclusive access to Him, and that the books that tell us about these privileged encounters are the uncorrupted truth.

Most of us have been indoctrinated into such beliefs since childhood, so that by the time we start defending God against unbelievers, the best we can do is rationalize the faiths we inherited from our parents, families, and social environments. Take away the holy books and the theologians that have spent millennia preaching their dogmas and we are left with only our mere existences, alone with the elements, without any guide to show us how to make sense of our lives. This is, in fact, how the world was in ancient Greece before Christianity took over and condemned philosophy to perdition. And this is the world that the British philosopher A. C. Grayling wants us to rediscover in his newly published book, The God Argument: The Case Against Religion and for Humanism (2013).

Grayling doesn’t talk about the role of writing and scripture in the making of religions; he is more interested in making a humanist case against the basic assumptions of the three monotheistic religions. (Buddhism, Jainism and Confucianism, for example, are better understood as philosophies, not religions in the sense Westerners understand the term.) Such religions, a “hangover from the infancy of modern humanity,” a collection of “superstitions of illiterate herdsmen living several thousands of years ago,” expressions of the “pre-scientific, rudimentary metaphysics of our ancestors,” and a relic of the distant unlettered past are “essentially a stone-age outlook in the modern world.” It would be as if today’s governments still depended on the power of astrology and magic to govern people and run their affairs. This survival, needless to say, is astonishing in an age when science has made great strides—but, then again, science has yet to make a significant impact on many parts of the world, including the Islamic one. Continue reading Humans without Gods →

Voltaire on Tolerance

Books You Should Read, Ethics, Islam and Christianity, Terrorism Issue


Allegorical bust of Voltaire; from 1901 text

One of the vexing paradoxes of modernity is whether or not intolerance can be tolerated. Should dictators be cuddled if they play up to the foreign policy concerns of a democracy? Should anyone — man, woman or child — be forced to live by religious dogma? How much of the intolerable actions in this world should we tolerate? Some wise words on the problem were offered two and a half centuries ago by the French savant, Voltaire, as brilliantly said in his Philosophical Dictionary. Here is what Voltaire said:

What is tolerance? it is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other’s folly–that is the first law of nature.

It is clear that the individual who persecutes a man, his brother, because he is not of the same opinion, is a monster. That admits of no difficulty. But the government! but the magistrates! but the princes! how do they treat those who have another worship than theirs? If they are powerful strangers, it is certain that a prince will make an alliance with them. Franois I., very Christian, will unite with Mussulmans against Charles V., very Catholic. Francois I. will give money to the Lutherans of Germany to support them in their revolt against the emperor; but, in accordance with custom, he will start by having Lutherans burned at home. For political reasons he pays them in Saxony; for political reasons he burns them in Paris. But what will happen? Persecutions make proselytes? Soon France will be full of new Protestants. At first they will let themselves be hanged, later they in their turn will hang. There will be civil wars, then will come the St. Bartholomew; and this corner of the world will be worse than all that the ancients and moderns have ever told of hell.

Madmen, who have never been able to give worship to the God who made you! Miscreants, whom the example of the Noachides, the learned Chinese, the Parsees and all the sages, has never been able to lead! Monsters, who need superstitions as crows’ gizzards need carrion! you have been told it already, and there is nothing else to tell you-if you have two religions in your countries, they will cut each other’s throat ; if you have thirty religions, they will dwell in peace. Look at the great Turk, he governs Guebres, Banians, Creek Christians, Nestorians, Romans. The first who tried to stir up tumult would be impaled; and everyone is tranquil.

Sanaa Book Republished

Anthropology/Sociology, Archaeology and Antiquities, Architecture, Books You Should Read, Coffee, Food and Drink, Qat (Catha edulis), Sanaa, Shi'a, Travel, Yemen

One of the most important volumes for anyone interested in Yemen is San’a’ An Arabian Islamic City, edited by R. B. Serjeant and R. Lewcock for the World of Islam Festival Trust in 1983. Long out-of-print, it is now being brought back into print. And there is a discount, if ordered before April 30, 2013.

The published price is £85.00 but the book is being offered at a pre-publication price of £50.00 until 30th of April 2013, quote SP13 to receive this offer.

For details, contact:

Vicki Coombs
Melisende UK Ltd
G8 Allen House
The Maltings, Station Road
Sawbridgeworth
Herts. CM21 9JX
+44 (0)1279 721398
www.melisende.com

Garden of Eden in Sanaa

Bible and Holy Land, Books You Should Read, Orientalism, Sanaa, Yemen


Could the biblical Garden of Eden really be a reference to the gardens of Sanaa, Yemen? If you think this is a crazy idea, you simply do not realize the genius of Voltaire, the 18th century savant whose Philosophical Dictionary is in itself a garden of intellectual delights. In his commentary on Genesis, Voltaire rejects the idea that Eden was between the four rivers mentioned, claiming another explanation is needed and other rivers should be searched for. Then he drops this tantalizing datum:

In any case, the garden of Eden was manifestly taken from the garden of Eden at Sanaa, in Arabia Felix, famous throughout antiquity. The Hebrews, a very recent people, were an Arab horde. They prided themselves on what was finest in the best canton of Arabia. They have always used for their own purposes the ancient traditions of the great nations in whose midst they formed an enclave.

So Sanaa once was paradise. Let us hope that it shall return to that state again, with fruit only from the tree of the knowledge of good and rivers flowing with the water Yemen so desperately needs.

Keeping track of camels

Animals, Anthropology/Sociology, Archaeology and Antiquities, Books You Should Read, camels, Conferences and Talks, Folklore and Proverbs


In 2010 I had the privilege of participating in an international conference in Vienna on camels (not on camelback, of course). A book from this conference has now appeared. This is: Eva-Maria KNOLL – Pamela BURGER, editors, Camels in Asia and North Africa. Interdisciplinary Perspectives on their Past and Present Significance. 2012, 290 p., with 26 articles, 33 graphs/maps, 111 pictures, and an index. My article is on what camels eat, for which I have created a website.

Here is how the editors describe the book:

Humanity’s history is closely linked to those of camels. Without these remarkable animals we could not have inhabited the arid zones of Asia and North Africa, nor could we cope with today’s challenges of increasing desertification. Researching interactions between humans and camels therefore has been established at the Austrian Academy of Sciences ever since its foundation more than 160 years ago. The present publication is committed to this research tradition. This book assembles insights upon current and historical interactions between humans and camels. Thereby it is international and interdisciplinary from the outset and aims at intensifying a camel-related knowledge exchange between the natural sciences and the humanities. The here presented discussions of Old World camels (dromedary, Bactrian, wild camel) include such diverse topics as camel origin, domestication, breeding, raising and commerce. Moreover, camels’ significance is also discussed regarding socio-cultural and economic factors, music, folk medicine and veterinary medicine, as well as saving the last remaining wild camels. With an afterword by Richard W. Bulliet (New York), one of the world’s leading authorities on the camels’ history.

Orientalism and Bibliolatry:
Framing the Holy Land in 19th Century Protestant Bible Customs Texts

Archaeology and Antiquities, Bible and Holy Land, Books You Should Read, Islam and Christianity, Lithographs, Orientalism, Palestine, Travel

I have recently published an article in a volume edited by Ian Netton, entitled Orientalism Revisited: Art, Land and Voyage (London: Routledge, 2013, pp. 187-204). I provide the introductory paragraphs below.


Orientalism and Bibliolatry:
Framing the Holy Land in 19th Century Protestant Bible Customs Texts

“The Orient was almost a European invention, and has been since antiquity a place of romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes, remarkable experiences.” Edward Said, Orientalism, 1979

“In a word, Palestine is one vast tablet whereupon God’s messages to men have been drawn, and graven deep in living characters by the Great Publisher of glad tidings, to be seen and read of all to the end of time.” William M. Thomson, The Land and the Book, 1859

This essay begins with a famous opening phrase from Edward Said’s Orientalism not because there is a need to validate or dispute it, but because of what it leaves out. Indeed, Said’s caveat of “almost” is telling, since his text only describes the “Orient” invented through the writings of Western writers. What is remarkable about Said’s styling of the Orient as a form of politicized discourse is that the most important part of this invention is missing: the Orient invaded by Napoleon is also the Holy Land, the “vast tablet,” as American missionary William Thomson phrases it, which brings the Bible to life. Napoleon may have initiated Western imperialist ambitions in this Holy Land, but the ultimate failure of his military mission stands in stark contrast to the perpetual array of Christian pilgrims, scholars and missionaries who visited this holiest of Holy Lands for Christians and Jews. Absent from Said’s text is the genre that was most widely read in 19th century Europe and America, specifically Holy Land travel texts that cited contemporary customs and manners of Arabs and other groups encountered as illustrations of Bible characters for popular consumption, especially among Protestants.

Said’s genealogy of the discourse he identifies as Orientalism is a thoroughly academic one. Continue reading Orientalism and Bibliolatry:
Framing the Holy Land in 19th Century Protestant Bible Customs Texts →

Islam: The Arab Religion

Books You Should Read, Islam and Christianity, Islam: Introduction, Islamic History, Islamic Texts


By Anouar Majid, Tingis Redux, February 22nd

A few months ago, I immersed myself in a kind of reading that I wish was available to me and my teachers when I was in high school in Tangier (Morocco) studying philosophy and Islamic Studies. It is the kind of slow—very slow—reading that keeps you constantly challenged and fully awake. It is archeological and historical work informed by a knowledge so vast that a reader must struggle to keep track of all sorts of cultures, languages, dates, and names. Only scholarship of this scope, though, can aim at the heart of gigantic myths—myths so powerful and persistent that centuries of generations have taken them for reality and billions continue to believe in their truth.

I decided to devote some time to the work of Professor Patricia Crone because her name kept appearing with increasing frequency in the literature I had been reading in the last few years, whether by scholars who share her general view or not. I thought it was time to have a first-hand experience of what Crone’s thesis is about. So, in no particular order, and rather quickly, I read God’s Rule: Government and Islam (2004), co-written with Martin Hinds; Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam (first published in 1987); Slaves on Horses (1980) and Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World, the book she co-authored with Michael Cook in 1977 and which caused a storm in the rarified circles of scholars. Even though she may have changed her mind since she published the book in 1977, Hagarism and Meccan Trade totally upset the foundations of what we have grown to believe is Muslim history. They show, as do other writers in different ways, like Arthur Jeffery, John Wansborough, and, more recently, Fred Donner, Tom Holland and Robert Spencer, that what Muslims and non-Muslims learn in school about Islam is not facts that happened but literary compositions whose aim was to create a new religion with its own legitimizing mythology.

A Religion is Born

Muslims believe that their Prophet Mohammed, who was born in 570 AD and died in 632 AD, is the best human ever born in the world, chosen by God to spread his final and everlasting message, preserved in a heavenly tablet, the Koran. Starting out from humble origins in Mecca—a bustling crossroads in the caravan trade—and reputed for his honesty and wisdom, Mohammed married his older boss Khadija, received God’s message through the archangel Gabriel at a local cave when he was 40, fled his native city and migrated to Yathrib (thereafter known as Medina) when his persecution grew more intense, and later returned to Mecca as a triumphant Muslim conqueror. By the time he died, he had married several times and most of Arabia had converted to Islam. Soon his followers, known as Muslims, fanned out in a series of conquests (downplayed as futuhat in Islamic apologetics) that, within a century, had reached France and turned the Fertile Crescent, North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula into Muslim nations. Continue reading Islam: The Arab Religion →