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Reviewed by:
  • Islam: A Mosaic, Not a Monolith
  • Ebrahim Moosa
Islam: A Mosaic, Not a Monolith. By Vartan Gregorian. Brookings Institution Press, 2003. 164 pages. $15.95.

Not only is a little knowledge dangerous, but ignorance of a world religion like Islam can also prove damaging to the United States' national interests and harmful to global co-existence in the long term. So believes Vartan Gregorian, president of the Carnegie Corporation, whose reflections on this topic are primarily addressed to a Western policy community. Although most books about Islam these days range from screeds, impenetrable tomes to recycled redundancies, it is a relief to find a book with a commendable purpose. Although scholars might disagree with some aspects of the author's narrative or with his presentation of the information, Gregorian thankfully refrains from ad hominem commentary as many people in authority think they are entitled or required to make. For this reviewer at least, it was an opportunity to learn how people within policy and philanthropic communities frame the problems and issues about Islam and religion generally.

This book is a longer meditation of a post-September 11, 2001 report Gregorian wrote to the trustees of the Carnegie Corporation. Born in Tabriz in Iran and educated in the United States as a historian of Afghanistan, Gregorian has held prestigious positions in American academic life, from being the founding dean [End Page 1023] and provost of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania, then becoming president of Brown University followed by the presidency of the New York Public Library. His interest in the world of Islam predates America's most recent but painful tryst with things Islamic. On assuming the leadership of the Carnegie Corporation in 1997, Gregorian publicly complained about the lack of knowledge about Islam in American public life. By 2005 the Corporation dedicated its prestigious Carnegie Scholars Program to broadening and stimulating research on Islam in the United States and abroad. For the purposes of full disclosure, this reviewer was among sixteen recipients of this competitive award, and the Program is expected to continue for at least three years.

In six chapters Gregorian does several things. He undertakes a survey of Islam for the uninitiated and then explores the tensions between traditionalists and modernists and the challenges of the twentieth century, from the politics of liberation prevalent in Muslim societies to debates over the meaning of democracy and modernity. He concludes with a plea for mutual understanding between mainly Euro-American society and the Muslim world.

As the youngest of the three religions that trace their roots to Abraham, Islamdom also has the freshest memory of the dismemberment of its political unity by a concatenation of internal weaknesses and the designs of foreign powers. These events also set into motion significant waves of cultural and technological transitions in Muslim societies. It is in this context that Gregorian explores the kinds of challenges that modernization poses to Muslim societies. Citing Toynbee, Gregorian endorses the belief that "civilizations rise when people make creative responses to a variety of challenges—geographic, economic, political, and spiritual—and their continuing creativity sustains their civilizations" (40).

But the thrust of Gregorian's narrative is more interesting than the details he marshals to make his case. In a message directed at decision-makers in different spheres of US society, he relentlessly tries to reassure us that, as a religion, Islam is not a threat as many fear. Even when one finds ideological groups cemented by Islam, there remain so many complex and natural fragments, divisions, and disagreements to offset purported threats of a monolithic Islam, that such claims sound bizarre, if not intellectually unsound. Exploring three episodes in recent history of alleged Islamic threats from the "Islamic bomb" of Pakistan, the Islamic revolution in Iran, and the war of liberation in Afghanistan against the Soviets, Gregorian concludes that the "internal tensions and geopolitical interests of Muslim nations defied external efforts to impose any scheme of unity" (68).

All societies, Gregorian believes, including Muslim ones, need to address the tough questions that will calibrate the proper dosages of several factors and ratios: economic justice and freedom, individual rights and collective rights...

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