'india through fresh eyes' at london book fair: day 2

From top: Journalist, publisher and novelist Tarun J Tejpal, named by the Guardian in 2007 as being among the 20 who constitute India's new elite; Kashmiri writer Shafi Shauq addresses the seminar on 'literature of conflict'; Goa-based novelist and non-fiction writer Sudeep Chakravati, whose books include Red Sun - Travels in Naxelite Country; Punjabi critic and poet Sutinder Singh Noor, vice-president of the Sahitya Akademi; William Dalrymple interviewed by Soumya Bhattacharya in the English PEN Literary Cafe; novelist, founder-director of the Jaipur Literature Festival and director of Yatra Books Namita Gokhale, chair of the 'battle for the Indian reader' seminar, enjoys a joke with poet and musician Jeet Thayil, who writes in English and is editor of The Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poets; Jeet Thayil again; novelist and deputy editor of the Hindustan Times Indrajit Hazra; playwright, director, actor and professor Satish Alekar; poet, critic, translator and editor K Satchidanandan who writes in Malayalam and English; the author, poet and academician U R Ananthamurthy who writes in Kannada; prolific Gujurati novelist and short story writer Varsha Adalja; poet, novelist and non-fiction author Vikram Seth, the LBF Author of the Day; scriptwriter, lyricist, poet and activist Javed Akhtar; poet and short story writer Professor Temsula Ao, dean of the School of Humanities and Education at North Eastern Hill University, Shillong; author, scriptwriter and banker Bolwar Mahamad Kunhi who is credited with introducing Muslim culture into creative Kannada prose; writer, poet, lyricist and advertising executive Prasoon Joshi who, as executive chairman of McCann Worldgroup India & Regional Executive Creative Director Asia Pacific is considered "the young contemporary face of the Indian Advertising Industry"; the New York Film Academy-trained Bengali filmmaker and theatre director Suman Mukhopadhyay; editor and columnist Antara Dev Sen, founder editor of The Little Magazine, with Indrajit Hazra.

'india through fresh eyes' at london book fair: day 1

From top: Earls Court Exhibition Centre; India Market Focus pavilion; S Anand - publisher of maverick Marathi poet Namdeo Dhasal, and the stand-in for Namdeo in the 'literature of identity' seminar - reading from Namdeo's blazing poetry; (L to R) William Dalrymple, Anita Nair, Daljit Nagra and Jaishree Misra get to grips with 'home and the world'; Professor Supriya Chaudhuri of Jadavpur University; (L to R) Chair of the British Council Neil Kinnock, Nobel prizewinning economist and author Amartya Sen and British Foreign Secretary David Miliband; Miliband interviews Amartya Sen (a pal of Miliband's Marxist theorist late father Ralph); novelist, journalist and critic Neel Mukherjee; Tamil Muslim poet and novelist Salma (pseudonym of Rajathi Samsudeenm alias Rokkiah) alongside the novelist, short story writer and bureaucrat Y D (Yeshe Dorjee) Thongchi whose mother tongue is the Sherdukpen dialect but who writes in Assamese; Dai Smith of the Centre for Research into the English Literature and Language of Wales (CREW), chair of the seminar on 'literature of identity', with the Indian Nepali poet, editor, linguist and translator Jiwan Namdung; another shot of Jiwan.

'beirut i love you' and 'the devil you don't know'

Baghdad, Beirut, and the literature of return
by Susannah Tarbush
Saudi Gazette 20 April 2009

In his acclaimed memoir “I Saw Ramallah”, narrating his return to the West Bank after an absence of nearly 30 years, the Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti writes, “But I do know that the stranger can never go back to what he was. Even if he returns. It is over. A person gets ‘displacement’ as he gets asthma, and there is no cure for either.”

Barghouti’s memoir - the English translation of which was published in 2003 - is an example of what might be termed the Arab literature of return. Wars and political turmoil in the Arab world have, over the decades, inspired many literary works along the themes of displacement and exile. This literature is now being complemented by a growing body of works by those who have been courageous enough to return.

Iraqi journalist Zuhair Al-Jezairy’s “The Devil You Don’t Know” and Lebanese artist Zena Al-Khalil’s “Beirut, I Love You: A Memoir” are two books published recently by Saqi, a London and Beirut based publisher. Both illustrate the theme of displacement on return to Baghdad and Beirut, respectably.

Like Barghouti, Al-Jezairy and Al-Khalil both experienced a sense of displacement when they returned to their home countries. Though the feeling of being out of place was a painful experience at certain times, it enabled both writers to provide particularly acute accounts of their societies.

Al-Jezairy was an oppositionist and journalist when he fled Saddam Hussein’s regime in 1979. He first went to Beirut, and eventually found refuge in London. In “The Devil You Don’t Know” - a work that is ably translated from the Arabic version by John West - he depicts what he found when he returned to Iraq in the wake of the 2003 invasion. His impressions are juxtaposed with the memories of people and places of Iraq that he retains from his youth.

Zena Al-Khalil was born in London in 1976 to parents who hailed from Lebanon. She grew up in Nigeria and England, but at the age of 18 she decided to attend college in Beirut. Her book is a tribute not only to a city but also to her best friend and soul mate Maya, who died of cancer. “This was the woman who would share her version of Beirut with me,” she writes.


Al-Jezairy is the author of nine books, including two novels. “The Devil You Don’t Know” is endlessly illuminating, written in precise, poetic prose. The author lays bare often contradictory feelings. During the invasion he joined other Iraqis gathering in London “like frightened birds”. They were divided ideologically into those who supported and those who opposed the war, but he found himself personally internally divided.

Al-Jezairy conveys the surreal texture of life following the overthrowing of Saddam. People who had been silenced for years had to relearn narrative skills while others emerged from cellars where they had hidden for long periods. The invasion’s darker side, however, soon revealed itself when a horrific chain of violence consequently unleashed itself.

Al-Jezairy has been keen to help establish journalistic standards in Iraq. This is no mean task, especially as he admits that the “assassination of journalists has taken the place of censorship.” For some time, he was the editor of the newly-established newspaper, Al Mada, and is now editor-in-chief of the independent news agency Aswat al-Iraq (Iraqi Voices).

Al-Jezairy writes, “Books have defined my whole personal evolution and history.” Many of his memories of Iraq revolve around his friendships with fellow intellectuals, and clandestine meetings with girls. Both Iraq and the author have changed. He has had to get used to young men in the street respectfully calling him “hajji” or “uncle”, while at work budding journalists call him “doctor” or “teacher”. He professes a certain fondness for this new identity, writing “being over sixty, it is true that I loved being the teacher of these young journalists.”

He notes the tension between those who had stayed in Iraq and the “returnees”, who were often rewarded by the occupation. In journalism, insiders felt a sense of injustice because “the cocky outsiders arrived with their dollars to scoop up all the important staff jobs, while they, who had lived through the wars and endured the privations of the sanctions, ended up working as freelancers for peanuts.”

Zena Al-Khalil is from a younger generation of Arabs, born and raised abroad. During the Israeli attacks during the war of summer 2006, she became known for her blog “Beirut Update”. It was quoted by the BBC and CNN, and was published in newspapers including Der Spiegel in Germany and the Guardian in the UK.

Al-Khalil has also experienced growing success as a painter and installation artist, and one of her collages was sold at London auction house Sotheby’s last October. Indeed “Beirut, I Love You”, which is written in a fragmentary form, itself often resembles a collage. Al-Khalil completed a Masters in Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts in New York in 2002, and she writes of the predicament of Arabs in the city after the 9/11 attacks. In a whimsical start to her book she imagines herself to have been reincarnated, starting as a Lebanese boy who drowned in the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 and was then reborn as the Druze singer Asmahan.

Al-Khalil conveys the hedonism of Beirut and recounts her adventures in the company of the equally rebellious Maya. She had difficulties with the expectations of Lebanese society. “No one knew how to deal with my tomboyish personality. My aunt would sigh every time I walked in with dirty sandals. My grandmother would shrug her shoulders when she saw me in torn-up jeans. And my cousins believed I was a hopeless case and that no one would ever marry me. How could anyone marry someone who only wore white baggy T-shirts?” she narrates.

Lebanon and Iraq have both been the subject of numerous books written by Westerners, but there are far fewer books available in English written by insiders of those two countries. Both memoirs are therefore valuable as they portray these war-inflicted societies as seen through the sharp eyes of two ‘returnees’.

arabian nights in translation and on the stage

Theater and new translation revive ‘The Arabian Nights’
by Susannah Tarbush

Saudi Gazette 6 April 2009

The fact that two major theatrical projects related to “The Arabian Nights” are storming ahead, is proof of the enduring vitality of this great treasure-chest of tales as a source of creative inspiration. Director Tim Supple [pictured] of London-based Dash Arts has recently announced his plan to embark on a tour of North Africa, Syria, Jordan, the Gulf, Iran, India (and possibly Iraq) this month to prepare for a new production of “The Arabian Nights.”

At the same time, the Royal Shakespeare Company has announced that over Christmas, it is to stage a reworked version of the acclaimed production of “Arabian Nights” first devised by Dominic Cooke at the Young Vic theater in 1998. That production subsequently toured the prestigious Edinburgh Festival, Dublin and New York.

During his forthcoming tour of the Arab world, India and Iran, Supple will sample the work of local performers from storytellers, actors, and dancers to singers and acrobats. They will eventually be brought together in a production of no set length or form. “We are trying to create a theatrical version of ‘The Arabian Nights’ which will do justice to the scale, depth and richness of the stories,” Supple told the Guardian newspaper.

Dominic Cooke too will draw on the skills of artists from a variety of disciplines. His production of “Arabian Nights” will include song, dance, puppetry and illusion. The RSC promises that the cast of 18 “will paint a dazzling array of stories and characters.”

Cooke is the artistic director of the Royal Court Theater in London. In his commission for the RSC, he will expand and develop his original version of “Arabian Nights” for the RSC’s Courtyard Theater in Stratford-upon-Avon. Performances will run from Dec. 5 this year until the end of January in 2010.

Tim Supple brings to “The Arabian Nights” project the experience he acquired when devising a stunning Indian version of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” which harnessed the talent of actors, dancers, martial arts experts, musicians and acrobats from across India and Sri Lanka. Rehearsals of “The Arabian Nights” will start next year, and the premiere is due to be held at the Luminato festival in Toronto in June 2011. The production will come to the UK the following autumn as part of the Dash Arts Arabic series. In planning the production, Supple is collaborating with the London-based Lebanese novelist Hanan Al-Shaykh, who spent last summer reading all the tales in Arabic.

News of the two theatrical projects comes at a time when interest in this compendium of stories is running particularly high, thanks to Penguin’s recent publication of a new translation. The translation, titled “The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1,001 Nights”, was undertaken by Malcolm C. Lyons with Ursula Lyons. Malcolm Lyons is a former Sir Thomas Adams’s Professor of Arabic at the University of Cambridge, while Ursula Lyons is an Emeritus Fellow of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, specializing in modern Arabic literature.
“The Arabian Nights: tales of 1,001 Nights” is the first translation of the full version of the stories in Arabic – which was published in Calcutta between 1839 and 1842 – since that undertaken by the explorer and adventurer Sir Richard Burton, published in ten volumes in the 1880s. The editor and annotator of the new translation, Robert Irwin, says the new rendering “corrects Burton’s errors in translation, as well as superseding his archaic and ugly prose style.”



Penguin has published the new translation as a handsome boxed set of three volumes - each of some 1,000 pages - at a princely price tag of £125. Each volume has an introduction by Robert Irwin, the author of several key works related to the Arab world including “The Arabian Nights: A Companion.”

Penguin has also published a £9.99 “taster” in the form of a small 169-page hardback which contains the Prologue to the “Arabian Nights” and three of the stories: “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves Killed by a Slave Girl”, “Judar and his Brothers,” and “Ma’ruf the Cobbler.”

The prologue tells the famous story of how King Shahrivar takes revenge for his wife’s adultery on all women by deflowering a virgin each night and killing her next day. This continues for three years until the vizier is unable to find another virgin for the king and fears the king’s wrath. The vizier’s extremely well-read daughter Shahrazad insists - against her father’s wishes - on marrying the king herself. She gets her sister Dunyazad, positioned beneath the marital bed, to ask her to tell a story. Night after night Shahrazad will use her gift for storytelling to keep the king hooked until the next night, thereby postponing her death. Ultimately, the king will spare her.

The core of the Arabic stories probably originated in ancient India. They were translated from Sanskrit to Persian some time before the ninth century, and it is likely that some Persian tales were added.
An Arabic version of the stories was in circulation by the ninth century, although it seems that the earliest surviving manuscript of the “Thousand and One Nights” dates from the 15th century.

In the early 18th century the French Orientalist Antoine Galland translated into French the oldest existing manuscript, and added a translation of a manuscript of the Sindbad stories. Some other stories (including “Ali Baba”) were relayed to him by a Lebanese Christian. The translations were very popular with French courtiers and intellectuals, and Galland’s translation was in turn translated into English and other languages.

Writing in the Times Literary Supplement, the Laudian Professor of Arabic at Oxford University, Greet Jan van Gelder praises the quality of the new Penguin translation and says it “ought to become the standard one for the present century.” He finds it fitting that it appears in time for the 1,200th anniversary of the death of the fifth Abbasid Caliph Harun al-Rashid, whose fictional persona appears in so many of the “Arabian Nights” stories.

The Egyptian novelist Ahdaf Soueif is not as keen on the translation as some reviewers, describing it in the Times newspaper as “a workable and honest translation, but not a sparkling one. And it makes me wish that the reader could access the original material.” She suggests that perhaps the “Arabian Nights” were never meant to be read, and are best suited to sessions with a storyteller.

It is likely that the forthcoming “Arabian Nights” theatrical productions of Dominic Cooke and Tim Supple will capture something of the flavor of the oral storytelling traditions that first nurtured the stories, punctuated by music and other diversions.


below, Tim Supple's Indian production of A Midsummer Night's Dream

two ceremonies bestow awards on british muslims

Awards balance media’s distorted view of Britain’s Muslims
by Susannah Tarbush
Saudi Gazette 13 April 2009
Events in Britain over the past week have highlighted once again, the difficulties facing British Muslims as a result of the terror threat to Britain. The arrest of 12 men – 11 of them Pakistanis who are overwhelmingly on student visas – and Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s statement on a “very big” terror plot, have revived suspicions about the UK’s Muslim community.

Some tabloid newspapers these days only have to place the word ‘Muslim’ in a headline for the reader to know the story will be sensational and mostly negative. The media tend to give prominence to the threatening statements of extremist loudmouths, while largely ignoring the realities and diversity of the bulk of Britain’s approximately two million Muslims.

Two recent awards ceremonies have helped put British Muslims in a positive perspective. They were antidotes to the clichés peddled in some sections of the press, and by certain politicians, of British Muslims failing to integrate and of contributing little to society.

The Muslim News Awards ceremony, held in London and attended by some 800 guests, provided evidence-galore of the productive role Britain’s Muslims are playing across the board in cultural, scientific and community life.

At the same time, a separate contest to find the most powerful Muslim woman in Britain was won by the feisty Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, the Shadow Minister for Community Cohesion and Social Action. The contest was organized by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), in association with the Times newspaper and Emel Muslim lifestyle magazine. The organizers published Britain’s first-ever annual Muslim Women Power List, naming a shortlist of 13 people. The judges announced their choice of Baroness Warsi at a dinner in Manchester in the North of England.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of The Muslim News, which launched the annual Muslim News Awards for Excellence nine years ago. In his speech at the awards ceremony, the monthly newspaper’s editor Ahmed J. Versi warned against the criminalization of a whole community because of terror attacks “carried out by a minute number of people”. He indicated that such criminalization risks marginalizing and increasing the alienation of young Muslims, and there is a danger that violent extremists will use this “to lure them in”.

Versi’s message was addressed to an audience that included Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, Communities Secretary Hazel Blears, Communities Minister Sadiq Khan, and Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg.
The Guest of Honor, outgoing head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, Archbishop of Westminster, said: “The dazzling array of nominees gives a humbling but heart-warming picture of so many remarkable initiatives, some of which show tremendous skill in fields as varied as music and medicine, and others that prove how hard so many people are working to build hope in communities around Britain and further afield.”

picture below, courtesy of The Muslim News, shows L to R Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, editor of The Muslim News Ahmed J Versi and Home Secretary Jacqui Smith

Nominations for the awards were submitted by readers of The Muslim News. A panel of seven judges drew up the shortlists and chose the final winners. Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor [pictured below, courtesy of The Muslim News] presented the Alhambra Award for Excellence in the Arts to the Baghdad-born master of the oud Ahmed Mukhtar who since 1990 has performed, toured and taught throughout the Middle East and Europe. He has composed music for theatre, film and TV, and four CDs of his performances have been released.

The graffiti artist Mohammed Ali [pictured top with one of his works] was shortlisted for the Alhambra Award and won the Iman wa Amal Judges’ Special Award. His “aerosol Arabic” style fuses classical Islamic calligraphy and urban street graffiti.

The Allama Iqbal Award for Creativity in Islamic Thought, sponsored by the Foreign Office, was presented by Sadiq Khan to Professor Muhammad A. S. Abdel Haleem of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London University. Abdel Haleem’s latest work, “The Qur’an: A New Translation” published by Penguin, has become a bestseller.

The Sankore University Award for Excellence in Education, sponsored by the charity Muslim Hands, went to Zafar Shah Iqbal. Iqbal helped found the Southwark Muslim Women’s Association, focusing on education as a means of empowering Muslim women. Professor Mohamed El-Gomati of University of York won the Fazlur Rahman Khan Award for Excellence in Engineering, Science or Technology. Some of the awards are designed to encourage the young. Fifteen-year-old freestyle karate and kickboxing expert Imran Sidat won the Imams Hasan and Husayn Children’s Award for Excellence.

The Malcolm X Young Person’s Award for Excellence, went to Faizaan Ahmed. As an 18-year-old A-level student, Ahmed was moved by the murder of his 19-year-old sister in November 2007 to found The Halimah Trust (THT). The trust aims to raise £108,000 by the end of the year to build a secondary school for orphan girls in Pakistan.

In the field of entrepreneurship, shadow justice secretary Dominic Grieve awarded the Ummul Mu’minin Khadijah Award for Excellence in Enterprise to the Muslim Enterprise Development Service (MEDS).

The awards place much emphasis on community work. Hazel Blears presented the Uthman Dan Fodio Award for Excellence in Community Development, sponsored by her department, to two joint winners: Black and Asian Service in Alcohol and Narcotics (BASIAN), and Shereen Williams, Director of the Council of Ethnic Minority Voluntary Sector Organisations.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith handed the Home Office-sponsored Al Biruni Award for Excellence in Community Relations to Ikram Malik, a founding member of Building Bridges Pendle and the Lancashire Forum of Faiths.
Faezeh Hashemi, President of the Islamic Federation of Women Sport, had travelled from Iran to present the Faezeh Hashemi Award for Excellence in Sport to the Muslim Women’s Sport Foundation.
The Ibn Battuta Award for fair, accurate and balanced reporting on an issue involving Muslims went jointly to 29-year-old Mehdi Hasan, the youngest commissioning editor at Channel 4 TV, and British journalist and famous convert to Islam: Yvonne Ridley.

Not every recipient of a prize was a Muslim. Reverend Gilleasbuig MacMillan, Minister of St Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh, won the Annemarie Schimmel Award for Championing a Muslim Cause in recognition of his determined initiatives over many years to welcome Muslims to his cathedral.

The Muslim News Awards revealed the vital part that Muslims are playing in many fields of activity across the UK. The near-simultaneous choice of Baroness Warsi as the most powerful Muslim woman in Britain illustrates the increasing Muslim presence at high political level.

below, Baroness Warsi with Trevor Phillips, chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission

new issue of arab world books

The online Arab World Books has e-mailed a newsletter to subscribers informing them of the publication of its latest issue, which includes a length review by playwright Tony Kushner, and Alisa Solomon - who teaches at Columbia University's School of Journalism and is the author of 'Re-Dressing the Canon: Essays on Theater and Gender' - of Caryl Churchill's controversial play on Gaza 'Seven Jewish Children'. The review was first published in The Nation.

Arab World Books, which contains both Arabic and English content, is "about the ideas, the books and the women and men who created them.Founded in Geneva in July 1998, it is the first Arab cultural online club.We are an independent non-profit entity staffed by volunteers. We welcome all contributions and encourage interaction. Our club is dedicated to enhance understanding between different cultures.If this interests you, we welcome you as a member of this club."

The newsletter states:
1- Join the discussion on "Tree Talk". Our Readers' Club selection for this month is the last published book for the late Iraqi author Fouad Altakarli. More details about the book, its author and links to discussion can be found on our Readers Club Map at:http://www.arabworldbooks.com/Readers/main.htm

2- Six new members join our Authors' Home.
We would like to extend a warm welcome to our new member authors: Darweesh Alasuty,Elsayed Hafez and Ahmed Elserwy from Egypt, Saleh Alqasim from Jordan ,Rana Jaafer from Iraq and Kamar Aljasm from Syria. D.R. Khashaba and Monir Oteiba's pages have also been updated.
Visit their new homepages on our Authors' Home.http://www.arabworldbooks.com/authors/default.html

3- What's new in our Literature and Essay Corners?
Multilingual PoetryFour Poems from Algeria, Libya, Morocco and Syria by Hocine Atrouce, Mohamed Masoud, Mounir Idrissi and Kamar Aljasm.Two poems in French by Renia Aouadene and Mohamed Khraief.Poetry in Greek and English by Dimitris P. Kraniotis. In ArabicNew free e-books to download offered by Said Salem, Abdelkarim Nahari, Hazem Khairy, Abdelnabi Elekri, Ali Tal, Fouad Nasredin and Abdallah Alfaifi. In English"Seven Jewish Children - A Play for Gaza" a review by Tony Kushner and Alisa Solomon - The Nation."The Death of Many Birthdays" a new addition to our Palestine file by Janelle Dance.Find them on our main page.http://www.arabworldbooks.com/

4- What's new on our Debate Corner?
In Arabic, browse a variety of new writings by Nada Emam and Jamil Salhut and others. In English "The Message from Gaza in Japanese". Professor Said Abdelwahed's Messages from Gaza which started on December 27 have now been published into a book in Japanese.Read them on our Debate Corner and participate with your own views and comments: Read them on our Debate Corner and participate with your own views and comments http://forum.arabworldbooks.com/

alastair crooke's 'resistance: the essence of the islamist revolution'

“One of the most radical and provocative books of the year so far”. This is how the leading BBC political journalist and presenter Andrew Mar described Alastair Crooke’s book “Resistance: The Essence of the Islamist Revolution” when Crooke [pictured above] was a guest recently on the BBC radio weekly Monday programme Start the Week, which Marr presents.

Crooke, a former British spy who turns 60 this year, is an extraordinary character who has devoted the past five years of his life to bringing about dialogue and engagement between Westerners and Islamist groups such as Hamas and Hizbollah.

After leaving his job with Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, generally known as MI6, in 2004 Crooke founded the organisation Conflicts Forum. The slogan on the website of the Forum is “listening to political Islam, recognizing resistance”. The aim is “to open a new relationship between the West and the Muslim world”. As part of his efforts, Crooke has organised a series of little-publicised meetings in Beirut between Islamists and Westerners including former politicians and diplomats.

Crooke’s 300-page book is published by the London-based publisher Pluto Books. His appearance on Start the Week was one of several appearances in London to publicise the launch of the book. Crooke travelled for the launch to London from Beirut where he has lived for the past few years.

Inevitably Crooke is a controversial figure, with some accusing him of being an apologist for Islamists and for in effect justifying terrorism. Others see him as providing a vital “back channel” to facilitate meetings between the West and Islamists, and as helping dispel some unnecessary Western fears and misconceptions of Islamism.

On Start the Week, Andrew Marr said that Crooke “urges us to sympathise with the struggles of Hamas, Hizbollah and other Islamist groups, but he goes a lot further, accusing Western civilisation of having badly lost its way, leaving people isolated, bereft and endangered. It’s time, Crooke says, to listen to the message of the Muslim world.”

Crooke writes in the introductory chapter to his book that his objective is “to try to explain further the essence of the Islamist revolution. To go to the heart of it to convey some sense of the power of the ideas as they have evolved; the excitement and the power of events and movements that are able to mobilise and energise millions.”

Crooke highlights the negative ways in which Western ideas have affected others in the past few centuries. He writes: “It is to this dark side to history – the complex strands of western thinking that stand behind the last 200 years of events – that I look for an explanation of why Muslims, suddenly, at a particular moment in history, began to feel the need to mobilise and to embrace resistance and revolution.”

Andrew Marr suggested that Crooke has in his book paid too little attention to the “dark side” of the Islamists. Marr said: “You will be accused of putting too easily to one side what these [Islamist] organisations would say about the position of women, about homosexuals, about lots of liberal freedoms that we take for granted outside that world. Perhaps if we have seen them too one-sidedly in a negative way, you’ve pushed too much of the dark side away.”

Crooke admitted that there is a dark side to the Islamist revolution. “There is not just a revolution of philosophers, there is a part that is dangerous and ugly, part of the counterrevolution... There is an element that has been deeply involved in literalism and dogmatism, and that is a part we tend to associate with Islamist radicals, but that is largely something in fact the West has created itself.”

Crooke says that he has not attempted in his book to provide “balance”, and that he is instead presenting his personal view. He had no wish to repeat “the torrent of scepticism and hostility towards Islamism – which seeks to brand it as nothing more than a violent, reactionary and transitory kick against the inevitable advance of modernity.”


Some readers will be disappointed that he omits all discussion of gender, given that the treatment of women is a focus of attacks on Islamism. Crooke knows he will be criticised for this omission, writing that whenever Islamism is discussed, gender is a key theme for criticism of Islamism. “But it is a fascinating area: feminism flourishes within Islamism; but not in the way usually understood in the West.” It is a pity that Crooke does not elaborate on this.

Crooke has had 30 years of direct experience of conflict in Ireland, South Africa, Namibia, Afghanistan, Cambodia and Colombia, and has been a co-ordinator in hostage negotiations in various countries. In 1997-2003, he served as advisor to EU High Representative, Javier Solana, in the Middle East, and he was security advisor to special EU envoy to the Middle East Peace Process, Miguel Moratinos.

Crooke was involved in facilitating a series of de-escalations of violence and military withdrawals in Palestine with Islamist movements from 2000 to 2003, and in helping arrange some six ceasefire efforts between Palestinians and Israel. He was a staff member of the Mitchell Commission into the causes of the intifada in 2000.

Crooke had a role in negotiating an end to the 39-day Israeli siege of Palestinian militants in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem in April and May 2002. Three months later the Israeli newspaper Maariv unmasked him as an MI6 agent.

In his book, Crooke aims “to bring out and trace the essence and spirit of the ideas that lie behind this rising resistance to the West rather than attempting a historical survey of Islamism in all its diversity.” He says “there is no one Islam or Islamism – there are many.”

He writes that at bottom the dispute is between two opposing views on what constitutes the “essence of man”. Underlying the conflict are differing religious insights – but this is not a straight confrontation between Christianity and Islam. The Anglo-Saxon tradition, which America embodies, emerged from the long-running struggle between Protestantism and Catholicism.

Since the days of Oliver Cromwell, in the mid-17th century, the mainly English speaking world has come to regard its enemies as “haters of liberty and God” who possess no morality and will do anything to win. “These same originally Protestant themes can now be observed reflected in western language towards Islam,” Crooke observes.

Islamist resistance was “jolted into existence by the trauma of social engineering, ethnic cleansing, political disruption, repression and massacres that were the direct consequence of the western experiment in exporting to Muslim societies its vision of economic market-based life, freed from social and political control.”

According to Crooke, the “enforced westernisation and secularisation of Turkey in the early 20th century, and the brutality of its nation-state building have come to symbolise the worst aspects of secular modernism.”

Crooke condemns the “western myth” of the free market and the “invisible hand”. He goes as far as saying “the western nation-state, human rights doctrine and the institutions of western democracy are all derived from these same myths.”

In evolving an Islamist ideology, “something important happened”. Along with most people in the 19th and early 20th centuries, Islamists had been constrained by western instrumentalist “scientific” thinking, but they suddenly broke free. This was the crucial importance of the Iranian revolution: “It freed Islamists from self-imposed constraints resulting from a hegemony of instrumentalist thought.”

Crooke says the Islamist ideology that evolved is “dynamic and substantive” and that Islamism is gaining the characteristics of an “open” society whereas the West is acquiring some of the characteristics of a “closed” society. Islamism believes that behaviour is influenced by the experience of “living in a just and compassionate community, and by humans behaving with each other, as God directed”.

On the question of Islamist violence, Crooke argues that mainstream Islamist resistance is “a means to facilitate political solutions through helping to correct asymmetrical imbalances and by forcing the West to acknowledge the importance of key principles as necessary to any solution”.

He distinguishes the “emancipator resistance” of movements such as Hamas and Hizbollah from the “burn-the-system-to-build-anew philosophy of Al-Qaeda and the eschatological [ie concerned with End Times] leanings of some Salafi groups. “The failure of the West to make this distinction empowers the more extreme movements at the expense of the mainstream.”

Crooke argues that Islamist resistance is no more “divine caprice” than the systematic violence that western states use as “legitimate force”. He adds that the “demonization” of Islam is a deliberate ideological operation, with the twin objectives of strengthening America’s scope to take “decisive action” and justifying greater American intervention in the Middle East in pursuit of the neo-liberal agenda.

The pursuit of these objectives has been a failure that is ascribed to a way of thinking that has strewn its wreckage across 300 years of history “and which in recent years has added another astonishing mound of debris in the Muslim world – a legacy that will haunt the West for years to come.”

It is clear that Crooke intended his book to be challenging. During his visit to Britain, he appeared on a lively and at times heated hour-long roundtable discussion on Islamism and violence on the Iranian government-funded English language channel Press TV. The discussion was chaired by Tariq Ramadan. The other two guests were the director of the anti-Islamist Quilliam Foundation, Maajid Nawaz, and the scholar and cultural critic Ziauddin Sardar.

Both Nawaz and Sardar expressed reservations about Crooke’s book. Nawaz told Crooke he thought he had “slightly romanticised Islamism.” Sardar strongly criticised the behaviour of Hamas after the Gaza war, in killing alleged collaborators and reportedly seizing some international aid. Sardar also said that suicide bombings against civilians in Israel should be criticised as much as suicide bombings anywhere else.

In an interview conducted by Sir David Frost on the satellite TV channel Al-Jazeera English, to mark the 30th anniversary of the Iranian revolution, Crooke acknowledged the gap between the theory and practice of Islamist revolution. He said that many of the Iranians who took to the streets at the time of the revolution “still feel that the revolution didn’t achieve its ends.”

Crooke added: “The Iran that they have today is not either as free nor as equal nor as just as they sought and so many of them want to see a new revolution or at least a further stage of the existing revolution actually to bring about a better society, to make a society that really is just, and compassionate and equitable. And this is part of the Islamist revolution.”
Susannah Tarbush

(Published in Al-Hayat newspaper in Arabic translation, 9 April 2009)