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Book Reviews and Announcements

Picturing Islam: Art and Ethics in a Muslim Lifeworld

by Kenneth M. George, University of Wisconsin-Madison

In a rich ethnographic narrative, cultural anthropologist Kenneth George introduces one of the leading figures in the world of Asian art, Indonesian painter Abdul Djalil Pirous, and his pioneering work in abstract modernist styles and modern Islamic aesthetics. Picturing Islam examines how religion, nationalism, ethnicity, and globalization have shaped the life and work of this original contemporary artist. Working in close collaboration with Pirous, George tells a captivating story about this painter’s pursuit of a political, religious, and artistic identity as it emerged over the course of modern Indonesian history — from a time of revolution and anti-colonial struggle to the current period of post-authoritarian hope and uncertainty. Along the way, the author offers insights into the cultural and political predicaments that befall the artist as he seeks ethical purpose and refuge in his art, and embraces Islamic aesthetics as a way to resist being defined by globalized art styles and discourses emanating from the West.

While providing a compelling and richly drawn portrait of an individual artist, Picturing Islam: Art and Ethics in a Muslim Lifeworld also contributes to a deeper understanding of the cultural politics of Asia’s postcolonial art world as well as the creative and ethical sensibilities of its Muslim artists.

“Scholarship on Islam in Indonesia has long lacked a good study of contemporary Islamic art. Beautifully written and theoretically nuanced, Kenneth George’s Picturing Islam is just such book, setting a new standard for the study of Islam and the arts.”
—Robert W. Hefner, Boston University

“This book is the future of ethnographic writing about art and a must-read for contemporary art historians and anthropologists alike. No portrait of an artist better reveals the creative processes of an artist so deeply in tune with his spirit and how a spiritual quest becomes an artistic journey.”
—Nora A. Taylor, School of the Art Institute of Chicago

Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgments
Note on Qur’anic Verse
Guide to Indonesian Spelling and Pronunciation
Introduction: Picturing Islam
1. Becoming a Muslim Citizen and Artist
2. Revelations and Compulsions
3. Diptych – Making Art Islamic and Making Islamic Art Indonesian
Part 1: Making Art Islamic
Part 2: Making Islamic Art Indonesian
4. Spiritual Notes in the Social World
5. Anguish, Betrayal, Uncertainty, and Faith
Conclusion: A Retrospective
Afterword: Choosing a Frame
References
Index

Kenneth M. George is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, an associate of its Center for Southeast Asian Studies, and past Editor of the Journal of Asian Studies (2005-2008). George’s first book, Showing Signs of Violence, was awarded the 1998 Harry J. Benda Prize in Southeast Asian Studies by the Association for Asian Studies. His research on the politics of Islamic art and culture in Southeast Asia has been supported by fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, the Social Science Research Council, and the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton.

ISBN: 978-1-4051-2957-2
Paperback ~ 184 pages, 25 color plates, 25 b/w photographs
January 2010 ~ Wiley-Blackwell ($29.95)

For additional information, including reading samples, please visit:
http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1405129573.html

To purchase a copy from Wiley-Blackwell, visit:
http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1405129573.html

Sharing the Sacred: Practicing Pluralism in Muslim North India

By Anna Bigelow

Inter-religious relations in India are notoriously fraught, not infrequently erupting into violence. This book looks at a place where the conditions for religious conflict are present, but active conflict is absent. Bigelow focuses on a Muslim majority Punjab town (Malkerkotla) where both during the Partition and subsequently there has been no inter-religious violence. With a minimum of intervention from outside interests, Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs have successfully managed conflict when it does arise. Bigelow explores the complicated history of the region, going back to its foundation by a Sufi saint in the fifteenth century. Combining archival and interview material, she accounts for how the community's idealized identity as a place of peace is realized on the ground through a variety of strategies. As a story of peace in a region of conflict, this study is an important counterbalance to many conflict studies and a corrective to portrayals of Islamic cultures as militant and intolerant. This fascinating town with its rich history will be of interest to students and scholars of Islam, South Asia, and peace and conflict resolution.

ISBN: 9780195368239, more info on Oxford University Press

Passive Revolution: Absorbing the Islamic Challenge to Capitalism

By Cihan Tugal

Over the last decade, pious Muslims all over the world have gone through contradictory transformations. Though public attention commonly rests on the turn toward violence, this book's stories of transformation to "moderate Islam" in a previously radical district in Istanbul exemplify another experience.

In a shift away from distrust of the state to partial secularization, Islamists in Turkey transitioned through a process of absorption into existing power structures. With rich descriptions of life in the district of Sultanbeyli, this unique work investigates how religious activists organized, how authorities defeated them, and how the emergent pro-state Justice and Development Party incorporated them.

As Tugal reveals, the absorption of a radical movement was not simply the foregone conclusion of an inevitable world-historical trend but an outcome of contingent struggles. With a closing comparative look at Egypt and Iran, the book situates the Turkish case in a broad historical context and discusses why Islamic politics have not been similarly integrated into secular capitalism elsewhere.

ISBN: 9780804761451,
http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=9252

Memories of Muhammad: Why the Prophet Matters

By Omid Safi

Who was the historical Muhammad, and how do Muslims remember him—as a holy prophet, a cultural revolutionary, a military leader, or a spiritual mystic? Unending media coverage of extremist fanatics, the controversy over offensive cartoon depictions of Muhammad, and fatwas against journalists and authors are all hard to ignore and have prejudiced our Western perceptions of Muslims and their founder. This definitive biography of the founder of Islam by a leading Muslim-American scholar will reveal invaluable new insights, finally providing a fully three-dimensional portrait of Muhammad and the one billion people who follow him today.

Memories of Muhammad presents Muhammad as a lens through which to view both the genesis of Islamic religion and the grand sweep of Islamic history—right up to the hot button issues of the day, such as the spread of Islam, holy wars, the status of women, the significance of Jerusalem, and current tensions with Jews, Hindus, and Christians. It also provides a rare glimpse into how Muslims spiritually connect to God through their Prophet, in the mosque, in the home, and even in cyberspace.

This groundbreaking book offers the opportunity to move from telling Muhammad's story to talking about how different Muslims throughout Islamic history have both honored and contested Muhammad's legacy.

ISBN: 9780061959714, more info on HarperCollins

Black Muslims In Britain: Why are Many Young Black Men Converting to Islam?

By Richard Reddie

Islam is a world religion with adherents of all ethnicities, but more than two thirds of Muslims in Britain are of South Asian ancestry, leading many to believe that Islam is the preserve of a single community. But just as there is more to Islamic theology than Jihad and Fatwahs, there is more to the faith than Pakistani and Indian believers.

In fact, in the last 2 decades, Islam has arguably become the fastest growing religion among Black people in Britain.

This phenomenon is taking place at a time when the UK appears more disunited over faith, ethnicity and identity than ever before. This book provides essential insights into the impact of an often misunderstood and misrepresented faith upon one of the most culturally dynamic and expressive communities in Britain.

Richard Reddie is Project Director for the Churches Together in England's initiative to mark the bicentenary of the 1807 Abolition of the Slave Trade Act. Previously he was Education Policy Officer for Race on the Agenda. He has a BA in Caribbean Studies and Spanish, and an MA in Information Management.

ISBN: 9780745953205, Published: 7th August 2009, Format: Paperback
http://www.lionhudson.com/detail.php?product_id=1908549

Islam Under Siege: Living Dangerously in a Post-Honor World, by Akbar S. Ahmed. Oxford, UK: Polity, 2003. ix + 172 pages. Notes to p. 184. Refs. to p. 196. Index to p. 213. BP 45 cloth; BP 12.95 paper.

Akbar S. Ahmed’s provocative new book, Islam Under Siege, features a blurb on the cover by Professor Tamara Sonn proclaiming the book as “the most important book to date on life in the post 9/11 world.” I am generally skeptical of such lofty praises, but having read the work closely I concur wholeheartedly with Sonn’s assessment. Islam has been an almost endless topic of discussion since 9/11, through a multitude of parallel (yet independent) discourses: There are the large number of Islamophobic voices (Bernard Lewis, Daniel Pipes, Steve Emerson, etc.), some Muslim-sympathetic perspectives by non-Muslim scholars (Karen Armstrong, John Esposito, etc.), apologetic Muslim voices (Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Asma Gul Hasan), and Christian triumphalists (Robert Spencer, Franklin Graham, Jerry Vines, Pat Robertson, etc.). Rare has been the project that attempts to document these various perspectives and simultaneously rise above them. This is precisely what Akbar Ahmed succeeds in doing, and he does so brilliantly.

Ahmed is almost perfectly suited for such a task. A scholar of the highest caliber from a background in anthropology, Ahmed is able to combine the astute observations of a scholar with the heartfelt pleas of a believer who--rightly so--remains committed to the fact that Islam itself can and does offer possibilities for a pluralistic, inclusive interpretations that would allow Muslims and non-Muslims to live in peace and harmony. Ahmed is able to call on a vast array of Islamic sources, ranging from the Qur’an and the humanist interpretation of South Asian Sufis and Rumi, to the statements of the Prophet Muhammad. What astonishes this reader is the fluid and graceful way in which Ahmed is equally at home in the contemporary debates about the so-called “Clash of Civilization.” He takes the tiresome Samuel Huntington, the bombastic Frances Fukuyama, and the former-scholar-turned-polemic-master Bernard Lewis to task. He wisely recognizes that much of the contemporary situation of what Mark Juergensmeyer has termed “the global rise of religious violence” is inseparable from the narrative of globalization, and fully contextualizes contemporary Muslim responses to the West in light of anxieties about globalization.

Ahmed realizes that religion is an important part of the narrative, and does not shy away from it. Yet he also recognizes that the full story is one that needs to involve political, economic, sociological, and yes, anthropological explanations and frameworks. One of his many original contributions in this volume is in resurrecting the concept of “honor” and “post-honor” societies to analyze contemporary manifestations of violence. Ahmed proposes that one of the characteristics of both “developed” and “developing” societies in this era of post-modernity/high-modernity is one of excessive identification with a group (‘asabiyya) defined ethnically, religiously, tribally, or nationally. The term ‘asabiyya was first coined by the noted Muslim sociologist Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406), and it is entirely appropriate that Ahmed now hold the Ibn Khaldun chair at American University in Washington, D.C. Ahmed posits that as a result of the vast reach of globalization, many people all over the world now feel themselves to be under siege. Globalization is an ambivalent process defined culturally, economically, politically, and technologically. This siege mentality is often expressed through the language of loss of honor. These hyper-‘asabiyya groups direct their blame at contemporary communities who are held to be descendants of a mythical past enemy. The last step is to inflict violence upon this constructed “other” in an effort to recover the groups’ honor.

Ahmed does not try to come up with a “one explanation fits all” model. However, it is astonishing how useful this fluid paradigm is to explain situations as diverse as the Bosnian genocide, the BJP-led massacre of Muslims in Gujarat, Bin Laden’s masterminding of the 9/11 atrocity, and yes, Bush’s never-ending and absurd “war on terrorism” that increasingly is targeted at Muslims, even if Bush insists that this is not a war against Islam.

Ahmed has a marvelous gift for a narrative, and an astonishing ability to weave together the perfect citation, concise synopses of complex theories, personal reflections, etc. It is rare to find a book that is so theoretically sophisticated and yet so readable. On almost every page there are nuggets of information that even a seasoned reader will be astonished to learn. It is a book that one can give to a friend or neighbor who wants to make sense of Islam and the world today as well as assign to graduate students in Islamic studies and political science. It is insightful without being dogmatic, and upholds a proud tradition of humanism. Ahmed manages to both report the contemporary situation of Muslims today as well as chart hopeful directions for an inclusive tomorrow for all of us. If there is a better book about our post-9/11 world, this reviewer has not seen it yet. Here is hoping that it receives the widest possible readership.

Omid Safi

Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies, Colgate University
Co-chair for the Study of Islam Section at the American Academy of Religion
Editor, Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender, and Pluralism (Oxford: Oneworld, 2003).

If you'd like to post your book review here, please send it to us at studyofislam@gmail.com.

	Bruce Lawrence, The Qur'an: Books That changed the World, Grove Press, 2008.
	Omid Safi, The Politics of Knowledge in Premodern Islam: Negotiating Ideology and Religious Inquiry, Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2006.
	Ebrahim Moosa, Ghazali and Poetics of Imagination, Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2005.