Beyond Belief – Islamic excursions among the converted people –

V.S. Naipaul

“Beyond Belief is a book about one of the more important and unsettling issues of our time. But it is not a book of opinion. It is, in the Naipaul way, a very rich and human book, full of people and stories.

Islam is an Arab religion, and it makes imperial Arabizing demends on its converts. In this way it is more than a private faith; and it can become a neurosis. What has this Arab Islam done to the histories of Indonesia, Iran, Pakistan and  Malaysia? How do the converted people view their past – and their future? In a follow-up to Among the Believers, his classic account of his travels through these countries, V.S. Naipaul returns after a gap of seventeen years to find out how and what the converted preach.

In Indonesia he finds a pastoral people who have lost their history through a confluence of Islam and technology. In Iran he discovers a religious tyranny as oppressive as the secular one of the Shah, and meets people weary of the religious rules that govern every aspect of their lives. Pakistan, in a tragic realization of a Muslim re-creation fantasy, inherited blood feuds, rotting palaces, antique cruelty – and the President Zia installed religious terror with $ 100 million of Saudi money. In Malaysia, the Muslim Youth is alive and growing, and the people are mentally, physically and geographically torn between two world, struggling to live the impossible dream of a true faith born out of a spiritual vacancy.

A startling and revelatory addition to the Naipaul canon, Beyond Belief confirms the author’s reputation as a masterful observer, a ‘finder out’ of stories, as well as a magnificent teller of them.”


Kenmerken

ISBN

9780316647014

Uitgever

Little, Brown and Company

Uitgave

1998

Oorspronkelijk

1998

Talen Engels
Landen Indonesië, Iran, Maleisië Singap Brun, Pakistan

Beschrijving

paperback, 439 blz, in goede staat

7.95

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