Of more interest as sociology than as a study in the social psychology of terrorism.
A social scientist examines the lives of three Canadian Muslims who left their prairie homes to join the jihad.
Soufi, a Muslim convert, attended school with the subjects of his study, members of a community who, after 9/11, became increasingly radicalized even as the most moderate members of that community came under suspicion of terrorism. The three disappeared from Winnipeg in 2007; with their disappearance, one friend remarks to Soufi, “they left a mess.” In a narrative that often reads as an academic report, though with plenty of human interest, Soufi looks at that mess through a geopolitical lens: Thanks to the prominence of the “clash of civilizations” thesis at the time, North American Muslims were viewed as the Other even as political leaders rushed to declare that Muslims were part of the “good” civilization as long as they supported its aims. The result, Soufi holds, was “a community tragically caught in the crossfire of an unprecedented and aberrant type of global war—one without borders and without clearly defined enemies.” Suspicion deepened when the three young men disappeared, two to fall victim to U.S. drone attacks, the other captured and, because born in the United States, now serving a life sentence in a Supermax prison. Soufi observes that during his trial the presiding judge made every apparent effort to avoid conflating Islam at large with its militant practitioners, yet that connection still comes through because of “subtle and often unconscious slippages between what constitutes the radical and moderate Muslim.” Although a greater threat to domestic safety comes from the white supremacist right, Soufi argues, North American Muslims continue to live under a shadow, all the more so, he says, after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
Of more interest as sociology than as a study in the social psychology of terrorism.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781479832262
Page Count: 272
Publisher: New York Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2025
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.
Memories and life lessons inspired by the author’s mother, who was murdered in 2021.
“Neither my mother nor I knew that her last text to me would be the words ‘Think you’ll be happy,’ ” Avant writes, "but it is fitting that she left me with a mantra for resiliency.” The author, a filmmaker and former U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas, begins her first book on the night she learned her mother, Jacqueline Avant, had been fatally shot during a home invasion. “One of my first thoughts,” she writes, “was, ‘Oh God, please don’t let me hate this man. Give me the strength not to hate him.’ ” Daughter of Clarence Avant, known as the “Black Godfather” due to his work as a pioneering music executive, the author describes growing up “in a house that had a revolving door of famous people,” from Ella Fitzgerald to Muhammad Ali. “I don’t take for granted anything I have achieved in my life as a Black American woman,” writes Avant. “And I recognize my unique upbringing…..I was taught to honor our past and pay forward our fruits.” The book, which is occasionally repetitive, includes tributes to her mother from figures like Oprah Winfrey and Bill Clinton, but the narrative core is the author’s direct, faith-based, unwaveringly positive messages to readers—e.g., “I don’t want to carry the sadness and anger I have toward the man who did this to my mother…so I’m worshiping God amid the worst storm imaginable”; "Success and feeling good are contagious. I’m all about positive contagious vibrations!” Avant frequently quotes Bible verses, and the bulk of the text reflects the spirit of her daily prayer “that everything is in divine order.” Imploring readers to practice proactive behavior, she writes, “We have to always find the blessing, to be the blessing.”
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9780063304413
Page Count: 288
Publisher: HarperOne
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
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