 | | | | Among the Believers |  | Author: V.s. Naipaul
Publisher: Knopf
Category: Book
List Price: $15.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  (50 reviews)
Sales Rank: 1882076
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1st
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 430
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.7 x 1.6
ISBN: 0394509692
Dewey Decimal Number: 297.095
EAN: 9780394509693
ASIN: 0394509692
Publication Date: October 12, 1981
Release Date: October 12, 1981
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Concise, observant and still incredibly relevant. April 25, 2007
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
Belief is a peculiar thing. It can promote optimism, unite people, provide social cohesion and stabilize governments, economies and cultures. Conversely it can fragment social systems, promote suspicion, stagnate progress and entrench a worldview so bound by its own circular logic, it begins to consume itself.
V.S. Naipaul writes convincingly, critically and often with a detached sadness of his journeys in the Muslim nations of Iran, Pakistan and Malaysia. Of intense interest to Westerners hoping to better understand these three non-Arab Muslim nations are a few key themes Naipaul hammers away at: How do these Muslim nations, with populaces often aggravated with the West, reconcile their use of Western technology, Western medicine, Western business theory and Western pop culture? How do Muslim emigrants and exchange students from the aforementioned countries reconcile their orthodox beliefs with the freedom and egalitarianism they encounter in the West? How do Western-educated Muslims reconcile their exploitation of Western openness, with their desire to suppress the very same freedoms in the countries they return to? How does Islam syncretize the cultural practices and regional religions that predated the introduction of Islam? What are the ramifications when an institutionalized faith supplants logic, ethics and the self-critique needed for national growth?
The answers to these questions are fascinating, illuminating, frightening and often humorous. Instead of broad anthropological observations, Naipaul actually finds the answers to these questions by spending an enormous amount of time with individuals at all levels of the social strata. He asks questions, interviewing incessantly, probing, prodding, finding out what makes the people in these societies tick. The results of his exhausting character profiles are fascinating.
Of intense relevance are the conclusions that Naipaul wasn't able to draw in 1981 when Among the Believers was published. We could expound upon Naipaul's observations then and hypothesize that as the exhausting attempts to create a romanticized, modern day "pure" Islamic state (complete with archaic Islamic law, Koranic-inspired science, usury-free banking, orthodox social customs, education, etc.) fail over and over again in places like Pakistan, Iran and Malaysia; extremism increasingly takes hold. The West with its obsession with modernity and radical free thinking becomes enemy number one. The "faith" must increasingly find outward enemies when attempts to succeed from within fail.
A fascinating, gripping journey into a world most of us will never know but increasingly need to understand.
Brilliant PsychoAnalysis April 6, 2007
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
Naiapul has a keen sense of observation and the most astute mind to have a look at things that are not easily discernible to most of social scientists. In this seminal work, Naipaul shows how Muslims in Non Arab regions are twice colonized people. Naipaul covers the history , geography and culture of varied Moslems in this book. The books finds out how an Arab faith imposed on local peoples has destroyed their individuality and capability to think freely. Books like these have made Naipaul a NObel prize winner. This book is a must read for all who wish to understand the devastating effects of Islam
 uncompromising on the logic of ideas yet filled with empathy for searching people January 20, 2007
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Why pick such a book and its sequel?
As a witness of growing current international tensions, my aim is to understand what makes the present Islamic world tick, and what drives its current evolution.
What source can best help do that?
A broad academic thesis/synthesis? A resident foreign correspondent's book? An independent on-site inquiry with a specific focus? I chose the latter option, on the chance that it would lend itself less to bias.
What author to trust and turn to?
This topic is hot, and more than ever politicized, today. Authors sensationalising the facts or pandering to current political correctness or social prejudice, just to boost sales, are rife on the market. What we need here is a bridge-man formed, through some accident of birth, by both East and West, a humanitarian, preferably agnostic, a universal man relatively at home everywhere and nowhere, a traveller and philosopher with no strong allegiance to any particular side but rich with the best values of both sides, with an empathy for men of goodwill and a commitment to truth wherever he finds it. I chose this learned man of integrity (whom l'Express calls: "the Diogenes of the East" and to whom Sweden has awarded a Nobel Prize). My `independent observer': J.S. Naipaul. (I know his stuff from "A Bend in the River": his fictionalised depiction as a marginalised Indian resident of an African country foundering into the corruption and anarchy of a failed state was detached, almost clinical, while remaining sensitive to the grim fate of the little people who are the ones who pay the dearest price of those struggles for political power in which most have no say).
What will you find?
VS.Naipaul's goal was to find out, through interviews of key local peoples, how effectively and successfully Islamic countries were implementing their revolutionary vision for maximum social good. VSN has an amazingly sharp eye and perceptiveness, never missing a clue. He has a capacity to follow up on intuitions with courteous but persistent intellectual curiosity, gently steering his interlocutors into rationalising their positions, with surprising results -- Results that reveal with unexpected depth the world of individual hopes, doubts, dreams, aspirations, as well as the occasional contradictions or delusions held by the encounters made in many walks of life. Discoveries that he eventually crystallises into insights of far reaching significance you want to keep in mind as hypotheses for further study. He leaves you with the rich and complex fabric that makes up key facets of the current psyche and mood of each of the countries or nations visited (Iran, Pakistan, Malaysia, Indonesia of 1990).
His assessment: fundamentalist movements may inspire a spirit of reform, unity and hope in the Islamic countries that embrace this ideology, but once in power, theocracies do not follow up with practical policies to implement those ideals as temporal social infrastructures and mechamisms that are essential to tap, channel and weave the creative energies of those respective nations into a promising future. This hiatus on the notion of government whereby religious fervour, exhortation and policing are considered the only answer required to restore a nation to socio-economic health is already showing signs of gravely stymying the potential of those nations.
In this mosaic of observations, some of the vignettes or profiles presented stand out as iconic of the tragic plight of those elites whose countries grope for advancement against formidable odds, a number of which appear unfortunately self-generated. This approach, conducted at face-to-face level leaves you with an unforgettable sense of fellowship with the various men of goodwill met, many of them courageous and admirable even if fallible, whether engaged in their life-long struggle for greater freedom for themselves and for their people, or caught in the turmoil of a social upheaval beyond anyone's power to manage successfully on the short term. This book presents with genuine empathy haunting snapshots of how painstaking and tortuous history-in-the-making can be in finding solutions that truly benefit the people's long term well being. Wishing you good reading! "Among the Believers: ...." is well worth the effort.
Astute and concise December 26, 2006
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Naipaul's late 1970s travels and my own, Pakistan apart, must nearly have coincided. So I was especially keen to take succour from an older, wiser man possessing an historical and philosophical net I lack. He also had connections and introductions to make swift incursions into the social fabric. I was enthusiastic but lacking languages other than english, remained a 'rubber necked' tourist through most of my encounters. Like Naipaul, an unbeliever, the islamic cultures placed other veils, and 'mysterious' codes of behaviour before me, the transient outsider. And it is just these veils that his stately intelligence helps part, if not lift. The Sunni, Shiite division are outlined in any backpacker's guide. But the historical setting of their respective introductions to the countries under question and their cultural, geographic and economic bases are incisively dealt with for the common reader. The overriding impression his experiences make is that 'in the days of Muslim glory Islam opened itself to the learning of the world. Now fundamentalism provides an intellectual thermostat, set low. It equalises, comforts, shelters and preserves'. Time and again he cites examples of muslims who have embraced the rebirth of Islam yet been in various states of denial regards the dependence on the 'evil' capitalistic nations of the 'West'. Naipaul talks to taxi drivers, teachers and journalists. Not a few have benifited from travel and education in countries of the 'infidel'. The failure of Islamic societies to create successful economic and institutional structures compounds, in Naipaul's summary, the tensions between hopes and realisations, both personal and collective. Faith or submission to Islam is given as the salve by even the most stident critics within the societies. Naipaul's impression is bleak and I suspect his updated book would confirm these early 80s conclusions that faith alone will not rescue struggling Islamic societies.
 Save your money with this age-old canard. October 10, 2006
5 out of 15 found this review helpful
This is a book that be surrenderes to a bias from the very first sentence in the book.
Mr. Naipaul, the Indian-born author, takes exception to many Islamic beliefs and allows him to fall in the trap of letting personal feelings come in the way of historical analysis.
The book unfortunately is therefore corrupted from that perspective.
Better bet would be to read: "Journeys in Islamic Countries" by John C. Bennett who unlike Naipaul isn't held hostage to his anti-Muslim passion but rather lets his impartial accounts do the talking.
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