Book Review: Black Suits You

My objective behind the Book Reviews section is to write about the books I liked and/or which deal with some “interesting/useful” topic; and so far I’ve been successful in doing so. The previous book I reviewed was a disappointment but at least it allowed me to highlight one or two aspects about Algerian writers.

Black Suits You by Ahlam Mosteghanemi was beyond disappointment. The only good thing about it is that it can be read quickly, especially when you do like me and read only half the words starting from page 200.

I’ve read most of Ahlam’s novels, actually all but Nissian.com. I liked Memory in the Flesh more than Chaos of the Senses and Passer-by a Bed. She’s a good writer and I like her style but her novels are all the same. So I was aware that I was going to read just another variant of Mosteghanemi’s work when I bought Black Suits You, but I didn’t expect the boredom I experienced while reading it.

Book Review: A world without Islam

Meeting with a book has sometimes to do with luck. Sometimes it is because you are at the airport with some foreign currency which you couldn’t spend even after you visited the restaurant, the café and the duty-free shops. And then you spot a book with a catchy title and the right price to empty your wallet. So you buy it and read it during the 12 hours-long flight. Then you decide to write a review because you have nothing more interesting to write about.
This is what happened to me and this book.

Well, not exactly. I decided to write this post because the book’s topic is essential in our present days where so many wars are said to be launched against Islam-ist groups and threat.

In “A world without Islam“, Graham Fueller tries to picture a world where Islam wouldn’t have existed and considers the current trends to find out whether they would have been different or not. Would there still be a war on terror, a clash of civilisations, hatred towards the US, etc.

The most influential Arab country is…

Some Algerian and Moroccan forumers spend waste their time online arguing over which country is stronger, better and more important. There are reasons which could explain the “animosity” we can see between these people, but this is not the object of this post.

I remember on the same forums I linked to above, somebody seemed to link the importance/weight of a country to the strength of its relationships with Europe (mainly France and Spain when we consider Algeria and Morocco) and the United States. This meaning that you are important only if Europe and the USA think you are. While I disagree with this statement, I thought why not suppose it’s true and take it a little further. So I would add that a country’s (or anything for the matter) importance to the US could be measured by the number of occurrences of this country (or thing) in the American president’s speeches.

The end of the Arabs?

Qunfuz is one of the blogs I enjoy reading regularly. In one of the most recent posts (entitled: “The end of the Arabs?“), the author speaks about the different visions behind (pan-) Arabism and why almost all of them have failed. What I like most about this analysis is the persistent optimism that Arabism may still work but it will demand a radical change in perspective. In fact, it will demand such a radical change that it will not be Arabism anymore – not as we have always been lectured on it anyway. Some quotes from the blog:

The definition of ‘Arab’ has expanded over the last hundred and fifty years from describing tribal nomads as opposed to townsmen, to describing the people of the Arabian peninsula, and then to describe all from the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf who share the heritage of the Arabic language.

The Ba’ath Party went so far as to find religious significance in ‘Arab,’ as is evident from the slogan ‘One Arab Nation bearing an Eternal Message.’ The ‘risala’ or message is what Arabs would previously have assumed to be the revelation of the Prophet (more often called Messenger in Arabic) Muhammad. The word used for ‘nation’ is ‘umma’ – a word previously used to denote the international Muslim community. In fact, Ba’athism should be seen as one of the twentieth century’s many attempts to compensate for the collapse of traditional religion (Nazism, Zionism, Stalinism, contemporary Wahhabism and hedonist consumerism are others).