Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey
Naipaul, V. S.
B 0 0 K R E V I E W S What a wonderful travel book V.S. Naipaul would have written, had he written a t r a v e l book! His eye is accurate and tireless; his sentences are deceptively simple...
...I feel lost if I think too much about the universe...
...At times he seems on the verge of doing so, or at least, he pushes the limits of what the "reasonable" man can do: The Prophet had founded a state...
...But it had the flaw of its origins--the flaw that ran right through Islamic history: to the political Lssues It ratsed it offered no political or practical solution...
...Naipaul / Alfred A. Knopf / $15.00 Ellen Wilson U n f o r t u n a t e l y , Naipaul aspires to more than a travel book, and, in the effort, achieves less...
...the blue hills went pale...
...It is also, for the community as a whole, a way of ceasing to strive intellectually...
...He shakes his head over the prospects of students training to become Moslem missionaries: "The message they were going to take into the world was extraordinary: a divinely inspired THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 1982 33 interfere with the enjoyment of life on a natural level...
...What either performance would prove is unclear...
...Is it not for money...
...I had shocked him...
...But this, in one way or another, is the theme of all religions: How, without God, could the world be endured...
...Rejection, therefore, is not absolute rejection...
...Why not call for those four things ? Why go beyond those four things ? Why involve those four things with something as big as Islam...
...This s c e n e - - a n d others like it throughout the book--pinpoints the book's constitutional weakness...
...he narrates Islamic martial epics...
...These natural gifts, let loose on the exotic landscapes and alien manners of the Islamic world, produce sensitive description on atmost every page...
...Here, for example, is his first impression of Malaysia, after leaving the deserts of Pakistan: Mataysta steams...
...He shows us student demonstrations and street paintings of beautiful women in tears...
...But the nature of the work is also important...
...How, I wonder, would he react to a message about a god who came down to earth and accepted death for the sake of his creatures ? I f N a i p a u l ?s uncomfortable with religion, he is very comfortable with modern demythologized Western society...
...He seems strangely unaware that large portions of the rest of the world (his "universal civilization") cultivate alternative religious identities...
...All religious people strike him as odd and "unreasonable," and he wastes much time and effort puzzling out attitudes that would immediately be comprehensible to Jews or Christians or even South Sea cannibals...
...Tempted," because t h e r e are radical differences--radical disagreements--between Islam and the West...
...He even forgets that military history makes little sense without detailed and colorful topographical description...
...It is a pity that Naipaul could not focus on these peculiarly Islamic--as opposed to religious--traits, and thus extend our understanding of this alien part of the world...
...In the rainy season in the mornings the clouds build up...
...Eliot A. Cohen Sarkes Tarz~an Inc...
...Naipaul thus dwells on submission to the will of God as though it were an Islamic quirk, and distastefully labels it "the Islamic idea of unity or union...
...and soon we w-ere flying over bare mountains, now with centipedelike ranges, now cratered, now hard and broken, now with great smooth slopes veined from the watercourses created by melted snow...
...Yes...
...I couldn't help wondering, as he probed Islamic psyches and questioned Islamic expressions of faith, how other religions, Christianity say, would have fared under the same treatment...
...Yet all major religions--and all the minor ones I am acquainted with-exact, at least in theory, a similar submission, a similar confession of man's littleness in the sight of his Creator...
...You have been searching for truth and yet you haven't got the truth...
...He unravels the abstruse religious g e n e a l o g i e s of Moslem minority sects...
...In other words, not only does Naipaul not believe, he doesn't understand what it means to believe...
...Let's get back to the United States...
...Tolstoy might have provided him with a clue in "What Men Live By...
...Even in Great Britain, Monty's reputation has suf~fered under the onslaughts of Corelli Barnett's The Desert Generals and Alun Chalfont's unauthorized biography...
...He had given men the idea of equality and union...
...Nigel Hamilton's Monty: The Making of a General (1887-1942) is a massive attempt to rehabilitate him, to defend him against criticism which stemmed in large part from Monty's undeniable vanity, nastiness, and mendacity...
...In fact, he goes further, making Montgomery out to be the hero of the Allied cause, g r e a t e r even than Churchill (who, like most other politicians and soldiers who cross Monty's path in this book, dies a l i t e r a r y death of a thousand cuts...
...In the afternoon it pours, the blue-green hills vanish, and afterwards the clouds linger in the rifts in the mountains, like smoke...
...But Western offers are tempting, and a difficult moral calculus must be employed to determine the degree of contamination...
...Yet Naipaul leaves me, in the end, confused and vaguely dissatisfied with his observations...
...Like a latter-day Wilsonian, Naipaul wants to make the Islamic World safe for democracy...
...0 There opportunity America...
...One must begin by admitting that qua biography this is a poor piece of work...
...Most Westerners would not quarrel with this analysis...
...Midway through the book, Naipaul records a revealing conversation with a young Malaysian named Shaft, who presses him to produce his own statement of belief or code of life only to have Naipaul back off and retreat to the neutrality of the interviewer: "I would say: what is the purpose of your writing...
...Instead of showing how the Islamic f a i t h catalyzed t h a t combination of religious zeal and xenophobic hatred, fierce nationalism and m6ated isolationism, cultural stagnation and revolutionary fervor known as the modern Moslem world, Nai32 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 1982 paul provides a William James catalogue of the varieties of religious experience...
...34 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 1982...
...they overwhelm dying_ coconut branches, fall off, they cover dying trees or trees that cannot resist and create odd effects of topiary...
...Prophet, arbitrary rules, a pilgrimage to a certain stone, a month of fasting...
...He interviews urbanized Malaysians uneasy about t h e i r s u r r e n d e r to modernity and nostalgic for the lost simplicities of village life...
...He cannot enter into, let alone sympathize with, that disenchantment with the World that is the hallmark of religious man...
...Not surprisingly for a writer who spends months on the road, he is keenly alive to v a r i a t i o n s in hotel accommodations--his description of the Khomeini-era Tehran Hilton, with its deserted French restaurant, Chez Maurice, meticulously set for nonexistent diners, is ludicrous yet oddly touching...
...his sentences are deceptively simple conductors of evocative detail...
...He takes us into government offices and the anxious pressrooms of Tehran's post-revolutionary newspapers...
...And this i~ an a e r i a l view of the country around Mashhad, near the Russian border of Iran: The-land over which we flew was mainly brown...
...A faint mist rose off the rice fields...
...Your average pious Christian, asked to explain his faith and the way it informs his social and political life, would probably entangle himself in a Gordian knot of logical contradictions and opaque affirmations...
...His efforts are prodigious...
...They will, of course, agree with Naipaul's criticisms of the Moslem s t a t e ' s confusion of political and religious spheres and its attempt to create a religious utopia...
...They will confound the fervor of Iran's Marxist students with the zeal of her Moslem mullahs, and prescribe as an antidote the benign reasonableness of the secular West, with its pursuit of comfort and exaltation of material well-being...
...He talks with Iranian Marxists, and with Pakistanis hungering for a " p u r e " Islamic state...
...There is no pretense of neutrality: Naipaul is squarely on the side of the modern world, or as he calls it, "the universal civilization," and he criticizes Moslem e f f o r t s to enjoy its f r u i t s without accepting moral responsibility: All the rejection of the West is contained within the assumption that there will always exist out there a living, creative civilization, oddly neutral, open to all to appeal to...
...AMONG THE BELIEVERS: AN ISLAMIC JOURNEY V.S...
...The title shows what he is about: He has come to the Moslem world to i n v e s t i g a t e the modern Islamic revival which has married political revolution with cultural and economic stagnation...
...It offered only the faith...
...You are not doing justice to yourself...
...True, Hamilton does not conceal Monty's petty viciousness and most other flaws in his character - - b u t he does try to excuse them...
...In sum, Mhnty lacks the perspective and the clarity of such great military biographies as G.F.R...
...and that he went at least part of the way by Boeing...
...I said, "No...
...Naipaul's response shows the chasm separating him from these people--and also, perhaps, from some of us: " S t i l l I didn't follow...
...But then, the whole question of a Creator discomfits Naipaul: "Do you believe in a creator...
...But that is the basis of Islam...
...The flat green fields to the east of Tehran quickly went by...
...Is it to tell people what it"s all about ?" "Yes, I would say comprehension...
...Hamilton, who was befriended by Montgomery as a boy of twelve, Eliot A. Cohen is a teaching, fellow in tlse Department of Government of the Graduate School o fArts and Sciences at Harvard University...
...And that, as I understood, was the theme of the Iqbal poem: how, without the Prophet or knowledge of his mission, could the world be endured...
...Those readers, however, who derive " u n i v e r s a l c i v i l i z a t i o n " from specific, spiritually fortified JudeoChristian roots--who do not deny the value of material goods or technical expertise but perceive the need for spiritual fundaments--will have mixed reactions to this book...
...Still, all religions, however much they may quarrel on other points, agree on this one: Religion makes a difference...
...I finished the book convinced of the intense and even fanatic faith of the Moslem people, but was there ever any doubt...
...This is not to suggest that there is no difference between Christianity and Islam, or that all religions are fundamentally alike, only that the agnostic is uniquely unqualified to demonstrate where those differences lie...
...He is grateful for its standard of living and the opportunities it offers him for fulfillment...
...Naipaul, though, is more than a frustrated nature poet, and his descriptions of Moslem cities, with their hybrid cultures and divided loyalties, are vivid and convincing...
...Naipaul is quick to admit that he is not a religious man--he is an unbeliever among these believers--but the supposed advantages of neutrality and objectivity do not show themselves...
...It is to be parasitic...
...Whether Islamic religiosity differs from that of the rest of the world is a questien Naipaul is not equipped either to pose or to answer...
...E a r l y in the book an Iranian Moslem tells Naipaul that Islam stands for four things: "Brotherhood, honesty, the will to work, p i o p e r recompense for labour...
...But when Naipaul draws facile connections between these conditions and submission to God, or "rigid rules," or "Islamic" repudiations of self-seeking and materialism, they will be tempted to side with his Moslem subjects...
...men abased together before the creator, and bound by rigid rules...
...I t ' s too difficult for me," I said, after we had had some discussion...
...Naipaul r e l i s h e s the story of one Moslem leader--whose credentials as an opponent of Western ways were impeccable-who, at the end of his life, flew to a Boston hospital in a final bid for health: "Of the maulana it might be said that he had gone to his welldeserved place in heaven by way of Boston...
...it may All articles of faith, all claims to revelation seem equally outlandish, equally implausible to Naipaul...
...so that this religion, which filled men's days with rituals and ceremonies of worsh*p, which preached the afterlife, at the same time gave men the sharpest sense of worldly injustice and made that part of religion...
...The dynastic quarrels that had come early to this state had entered the theology of the religion...
...MONTY: THE MAKING OF A GENERAL (1887-1942) Nigel Hamilton / McGraw-Hill / $22.95 Monty has never had a good press in the United States...
...The sketches of Moslem cities and countryside, the exchanges with students and civil servants, teachers and Moslem holy men, the quickness to spot humbug or hypocrisy--these are marks of a w r i t e r who has refined journalism to high art...
...it came red through the trees, fell red on the road...
...But to report is not to explain, and Naipaul seeks-vainly--to explam Islam's hold on its adherents...
...In books and movies--particularly Patton--he appears as an insubordinate weasel of a man, a r a t h e r comic figure who twitters about" thwashing Wommel" before moving to hog the oil and supplies that rightfully belong to American generals...
...Ellen Wilson is a contributing editor to the Human Life Review and author of An Even Dozen recently released by Human Life Press...
...Poland might provide him with a clue today...
...Readers like Naipaul himself, patriotic citizens of "the universal civilization," confident that the acceptance of this civilization, with its medicine and its mechanized farming, its parliamentary systems and its institutions of higher learning, will bring p r o s p e r i t y and contentment to the Third World--these r e a d e r s will r e a c t as Naipaul does and deplore Arabia's inexplicable attachment to this dogmatic religion...
...he visits model schools and describes their "stultifying" and "medieval" reliance on rote learning of the Koran...
...Ultimately, Naipaul's faith in political and practical solutions, in economic expertise and sophisticated parliamentary procedure, collides with I s l a m ' s faith in . . . the Faith: " I t was the late twentieth century--and not the faith--that could supply the answers--in institutions, legislation, economic systems...
...He indulges in irritating and pointless explorations of Montgomery's diffi-cult relationship with his mother--as if all men who do not get along with their mothers become, of necessity, g r e a t generals...
...Henderson's Stonewall Jackson, or Field Marshal Slim's memoirs, Defeat Into Victory...
...He observes and records it as a puzzling phenomenon, an unexplained oddity: as he read his voice broke...
...He is proud of its technical accomplishments and hopeful of its political and economic expertise...
...and sun and sky were reflected in the water of the rice fields...
...In Indonesia his eye catches the extraordinary- lighting effects of the late afternoon tun: The sun was red...
...It may be hokum...
...undertaking this biography I felt I would be repaying a debt of g r a t i t u d e . " This, then, is hardly an objective piece of work, however honorable the biographer's motives...
...Creepers race up the steel guy ropes of telegraph poles...
...It was not until Bernard Montgomery took command of the 8th Army in Egypt in 1942 that Britain-and the A l l i e s - - p r o d u c e d a leader capable of arousing a spirit of unyielding offensive self-sacrifice . . . . ' ' Hamilton has other faults, among them a taste for psycho-twaddle...
...He is like the Occidental to whom all Orientals look alike...
...This late-twentieth-century Islam appeared to raise political issues...
...Naipaut's religious blind spot--or perhaps I should call it hypersensit i v i t y - t e n d s to polarize reaction to his" book...
...At times he seemed a b o u t to sob: Islam as anguish, hell, heaven, redemption...
...And yet he writes too much: This book spends 850 pages and barely reaches the end of the battle of El Alamein (although Hamilton does r e t e l l that struggle well...
...I n s t e a d of c l e a r i n s i g h t s and unbiased judgments, there is in Naipaul a curious s o r t of s p i r i t u a l astigmatism, exaggerating what in religious terms is "normal," distorting his reactions and marring his observations...
...The idea of a vocation was new to him and--it was part of his openness--for a while he considered i t . . . He said, with a regard that was like concern, " I would say you are losing something...
...like a Kiplingesque believer in the White Man's Burden, he wants them to swallow the "universal civilization" Whole...
...The cultural dynamism of medieval Islam--which could t o l e r a t e A r i s t o t l e on the one hand and Omar Khayyam on the other--has long since spent itself, and t o d a y ' s Islam is suspicious of foreign innovations and wary of native ones...
...Bloommgton, Indtana says in the Foreword, "the gift of his friendship--the manner in which he took me into his house as a second s o n - - i s not something I can ever f o r g e t ; and in...
...Hamilton is a poor hand at giving the political and sometimes even the military background of the events he describes-at best, he offers only stage flats to set off the strutting of his hero...
...parasitism is one of the unacknowledged fruits of fundamentalism...
Vol. 15 • March 1982 • No. 3
