January 6, 2008
WELL, TOO MUCH CONSISTENCY WOULD BE INHUMAN:
Red, White, Blue and Green: a review of AMERICAN CRESCENT: A Muslim Cleric on the Power of His Faith, the Struggle Against Prejudice, and the Future of Islam and America By Hassan Qazwini (RASHID KHALIDI, 1/06/08, NY Times Book Review)
This book is many things. It is, first, a personal chronicle of Imam Hassan Qazwini’s own trajectory from Karbala, Iraq, where he was born in 1964, to exile in Kuwait and Iran, to Dearborn, Mich., where he currently heads the Islamic Center of America. Second, it is an argument for Qazwini’s variety of Shia Islam, rooted in Iraq and Iran and adapted for America. Finally, it is a political statement — in fact, two of them — a plea for Muslim Americans to immerse themselves in the life of the United States while simultaneously deepening their identification as Muslims, and also for a particular outcome in Iraq, where Qazwini’s father, a leading ayatollah, is imam of the mosque of Imam Hussein in Karbala.“American Crescent” introduces non-Muslim American readers to the world of Iraqi Shiism into which Qazwini was born (and which he left in 1971 at the age of 6), and of the daily oppression Iraqis, especially clerics, endured under Saddam Hussein. It is, as well, an introduction to the world of Iranian religious students and clerics, in which Qazwini lived for many years, and to the world of Muslims in the United States, where he has lived since 1992. Qazwini’s account of all these worlds is well drawn and dramatic. It is striking, moreover, how easily he glides from the personal to the religious, from accounts of his life and his family to those of the lives of the Prophet and the Shiite imams. This approach links the different elements of his book, and also illustrates the close connection between the present and the formative era of Islam for someone of Qazwini’s background, training and outlook.
Qazwini draws on his rich knowledge of Islam and of Shiism, along with his 15 years of experience of American life, to explain his faith to readers who do not share it.
Fascinating how justifiably proud the Right is of liberating Iraq's Shi'ites but how insistent on oppressing Lebanon's. Posted by Orrin Judd at January 6, 2008 6:17 AM
One can be in favor of liberating Russian serfs and yet be against their self-appointed champions, the Bolsheviks. One can also be in favor of liberating Shi'ites and yet be against their self-appointed champions, Hezbollah.
Posted by: PapayaSF at January 6, 2008 2:47 PMWhich is precisely the level of historical ignorance one expects from Shi'aphobes.
It was, of course, the tsars who liberated the serfs and had Russia on track to become a normal liberal democracy by early in the 20th century. But the Western liberals thought them too authoritarian and religious so backed secular rationalists who proceeded to murder tens of millions.
Posted by: oj at January 6, 2008 4:49 PMWell, jeez, so "serfs" was the wrong word. Make it "proletariat" and my point still stands.
Opposing Hezbollah does not make one a "Shi'aphobe" any more than opposing the Bolsheviks makes one a Russophobe.
And supporters of historically anti-American and anti-Jewish terrorists and wannabe tyrants like Hezbollah really shouldn't be accusing others of "historical ignorance."
Posted by: PapayaSF at January 7, 2008 12:32 AMThe Bolsheviks weren't Russian. They were secular Europeans. They did to the Russians what such folk do.
Hezbollah is, like the Tsars and their conservative supporters, the organic government.
Posted by: oj at January 7, 2008 7:35 AMIn South America?
Posted by: ratbert at January 7, 2008 8:42 AMSecular, sure, but European? Maybe in political philosophy, but Lenin/Trotsky/Stalin/etc. were certainly Russian. (Lenin seems to have also had a bit of the Mongol in him: in some pictures you can see he had the epicanthic fold.)
Posted by: PapayaSF at January 7, 2008 5:18 PMIn South America the doppleganger would be Trujillo/Pinochet.
Posted by: oj at January 7, 2008 6:51 PM