What I'm Reading This Month
By Linda Carpenter
September 2006
I picked up a copy of Militant Islam over 20 years ago and recently made it through the whole book. Although the copyright date is 1979, it somehow seems more relevant to me today. Through some online research, I found that the author, GH (Godfrey) Jansen, was born in Burma in 1919 and died in Cyprus in 1998. He was an employee of the British Ministry of External Affairs who was assigned to Beirut. He refused a transfer from there and instead became a journalist living in and specializing in the Middle East.
The book reads like a textbook, with so many historical details and analyses that it was beyond my interest to keep track of it all. However, I found it to be a good explanation of how Islam developed from the beginning and how different branches evolved. It also explains how interwoven politics, religion, and daily life are in Islamic countries.
Jansen blasts many of the non-Islamic scholars of Islam as having been biased against the very religion about which they instructed others. He explains how several European colonial powers made sure that native citizens in Asia and Africa were prevented from being educated in their traditional schools, yet few were allowed into the costly colonial schools. Those who managed to get an education became distanced from their own people and heritage.
The book is somewhat out of date and Jansen made some predictions that have turned out to be wrong. The combination of broad scope and ponderous detail in about 200 pages makes it difficult to read. If you do much of your reading on airplanes or waiting in lines, you might want to put a plain brown cover on this one. It does provide a historical perspective and made me want to learn more.
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