34/50: an excellent book!
Dec. 29th, 2008 01:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
winterbadgerThe news from the Middle East is impressively bad--Christmas seems to bring out the worst in all the actors there, for some reason.
However, I can strongly recommend that if you are interested in getting a good grounding in the background and current state of politics, society, and human rights in the Islamic states of the Middle East and North Africa, I can strongly recommend Robin Wright's Dreams and Shadows. I listened to the unabridged recording and, apart from the really atrocious job the reader did of mangling Arabic and Persian names, it was excellent and had me riveted the whole time.
Wright (who I respect tremendously) has lived in and reported on the region for decades and has a keen understanding of the countries she writes about. The book is a good combination of character studies and historical and political background and analysis. She draws out the character of people from all levels of society. She goes as far west as Morocco and as far east as Iran, meeting, interviewing, and portraying some truly fascinating people. She does not deal with Israel except indirectly because her purpose is to explore the Islamic countries of the region, but the book is no less excellent for that. She deals in detail with the politics of Palestine and of Lebanon, of Egypt and of Syria, and while Israel looms large in the first two, what's fascinating is how relatively unimportant it is in the latter two, where the people she talks to are far more concerned with the injustices of their own governments than with the cruelty and destructiveness of Israel (presumably because they don't live directly in its shadow).
I am left with a little more hope for the people of Iran and Egypt than I had going into the book. My negative impressions of the religious leadership in Iran were confirmed, but I was surprised at how positive my feelings about Hassan Nasrallah were after listening to her account of her unprecedented and lengthy interview with him. I have a considerable respect for him that I didn't have before. I don't say that he doesn't hold many views that are hateful, but I was impressed by his apparent honesty, his consistency, and his rationality. For someone rising from the stew of Lebanese politics, he has some admirable qualities.
More than anything, though, I was deeply moved by the sacrifices that men and women in the Islamic world have undergone to seek out freedom in their countries and bring their own governments (some that the US calls friends and supports, some that the US calls enemies and opposes). Democracy, when it comes to the Middle East, is going to come from the work of these hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of people, not through the barrels of the guns of the US military. And these people are paying a horrible, horrible price in torture, maiming, and imprisonment, much worse than any American paid before or during the Revolution just for speaking his or her mind or calling for justice.
However, I can strongly recommend that if you are interested in getting a good grounding in the background and current state of politics, society, and human rights in the Islamic states of the Middle East and North Africa, I can strongly recommend Robin Wright's Dreams and Shadows. I listened to the unabridged recording and, apart from the really atrocious job the reader did of mangling Arabic and Persian names, it was excellent and had me riveted the whole time.
Wright (who I respect tremendously) has lived in and reported on the region for decades and has a keen understanding of the countries she writes about. The book is a good combination of character studies and historical and political background and analysis. She draws out the character of people from all levels of society. She goes as far west as Morocco and as far east as Iran, meeting, interviewing, and portraying some truly fascinating people. She does not deal with Israel except indirectly because her purpose is to explore the Islamic countries of the region, but the book is no less excellent for that. She deals in detail with the politics of Palestine and of Lebanon, of Egypt and of Syria, and while Israel looms large in the first two, what's fascinating is how relatively unimportant it is in the latter two, where the people she talks to are far more concerned with the injustices of their own governments than with the cruelty and destructiveness of Israel (presumably because they don't live directly in its shadow).
I am left with a little more hope for the people of Iran and Egypt than I had going into the book. My negative impressions of the religious leadership in Iran were confirmed, but I was surprised at how positive my feelings about Hassan Nasrallah were after listening to her account of her unprecedented and lengthy interview with him. I have a considerable respect for him that I didn't have before. I don't say that he doesn't hold many views that are hateful, but I was impressed by his apparent honesty, his consistency, and his rationality. For someone rising from the stew of Lebanese politics, he has some admirable qualities.
More than anything, though, I was deeply moved by the sacrifices that men and women in the Islamic world have undergone to seek out freedom in their countries and bring their own governments (some that the US calls friends and supports, some that the US calls enemies and opposes). Democracy, when it comes to the Middle East, is going to come from the work of these hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of people, not through the barrels of the guns of the US military. And these people are paying a horrible, horrible price in torture, maiming, and imprisonment, much worse than any American paid before or during the Revolution just for speaking his or her mind or calling for justice.
