Quiverfull by Kathryn Joyce

Read: 10 August, 2009

Joyce examines not so much the Quiverfull movement as she does the Christian Patriarchy movement - Quiverfull, of course, being one component of it. The Patriarchy movement centres around the belief that feminism has caused a number of social ills that can be remedied only by having women leave the workforce and return home to be submissive wives and mothers. Quiverfull is the added belief that all attempts to limit the number of children a family has is an insult to God (the most famous practitioners being the Duggar family with their eighteen - and counting - children).

Joyce's analysis is mostly uncritical, her own feelings only rarely show through and, then, introduced explicitly as her own views. Her style is to simply narrate with few adjectives the views of her subjects and allowing them to speak for themselves.

Despite her fairness, Joyce's writing style leaves something to be desired. Her sentences are so long and cover so many different ideas at once that I frequently found myself having to go back and read again. This interrupted the flow of my reading and, therefore, diminished the power of Joyce's writing. The organization of the book seems to be haphazard with ideas coming at the reader from every direction. If any transitions are present, they are surely feeling very lonely.

Stylistic elements aside, this was a fabulous book filled with information on a movement that has, for the most part, remained outside the mainstream West's awareness. I highly recommend it for all readers interested in religion and what is happening under the surface in Christian extremism.

No god but God by Reza Aslan

This is quite a long review. If you want just the final verdict, it is this: An interesting book with some good qualities overshadowed by a persistent lack of authorial honesty.

Read: 31 July, 2009

I don't want this review to be about whether or not I agree with Aslan. For one thing, I simply do not know enough about the subject to do this well. Secondly, whether a book is good or not does not depend on whether the reader agrees with its conclusions; my own feelings on the matter are therefore irrelevant. Having resolved myself in this way, I will be restricting this review to an internal critique only.

Overall, Aslan didn't fare too poorly. His tone is largely reasonable throughout and, if read without close attention to detail, I could see this being a fairly persuasive book.

However, the details are important and, as we shall see, they are where Aslan keeps his devils. I was dismayed to see the number of rhetorical fallacies used throughout the book. Giving the benefit of doubt, I choose to assume that many simply result in Aslan's inability to reconcile his beliefs with some of the evidence he has found. He has likely tricked himself into blindness with regards to the evidence's significance (something that those of us without a vested interest in the topic are not so much in danger of).

This manifests itself most when he attempts to justify the actions of Muhammad. Perhaps the most grievous illustration comes in Aslan's discussion of Muhammad raiding caravans: "In pre-Islamic Arabia, caravan raiding was a legitimate means for small clans to benefit from the wealth of larger ones. It was in no way considered stealing..." This is followed, one paragraph later, with: Muhammad's followers "effectively disrupted the trade flowing in and out of Mecca. It wasn't long before caravans entering the sacred city began complaining to the Quraysh that they no longer felt safe travelling through the region" (p. 82-3).

A few pages later, we read that Islam teaches peace and that only defensive fighting is permissible. Aslan then goes on to say that: "It is true that some verses in the Quran instruct Muhammad and his followers to 'slay the polytheists wherever you confront them' (9:5); to 'carry the struggle to the hypocrites who deny the faith' (9:73); and, especially, to 'fight those who do not believe in God and the Last Day' (9:29). However, it must be understood that these verses were directed specifically at the Quraysh and their clandestine partisans in Yathrib" (p. 84). These "clandestine partisans" being the people that Muhammad suspected "at once" of treachery, though there were "many possibilities" (p. 89). In other words, Islam is a religion of peace, unless you suspect someone on circumstantial evidence of being in cohoots with guys its okay to attack because Muhammad just really doesn't like them. That Aslan, a seemingly intelligent and thoughtful individual, should fail to see the obvious issues in his arguments is astounding.

Aslan expends much ink talking about how Islam never forces conversion or treats non-Muslims unfairly, and yet an equal amount of ink appears to contradict this. Whether he talks about all the groups who rebel and refuse to pay the religious tax as soon as Muhammad dies (p. 110), or the public conversion of Muhammad's old enemy, Hind, who "remained proudly defiant, barely masking her disgust with Muhammad and his 'provincial' faith" (p. 106). He even mentions the "protection tax," or jizyah, forced onto all non-Muslims living in Muslim-controlled areas as though this were a perfectly acceptable way to treat human beings (p. 94).

So far, I have listed only examples that could legitimately stem from the author's lack of thoughtful consideration. I expect better, but at least it is a forgiveable offence. If this were the end of it, No god but God might still have received a positive review from me. Unfortunately, some of Aslan's word choices seem to indicate a more deliberate intent.

Sometimes, it is a problem of omission: "[F]rom the earliest days of the Islamic expansion to the bloody wars and inquisition of the Crusades to the tragic consequences of colonialism..." (p. xvi). Things the Christian West has done are "bloody" and "tragic" while things the Muslim East has done receive no adjectives at all? As is common in discussions of the tension between the East and West, there is no mention of the Battle of Tours. I have yet to figure out if this is simply obscure history that no scholar of Christian/Muslim issues has ever heard about, or if there is something more sinister in it's lack of mention.

Sometimes Aslan chooses positive words to describe acts that clearly couldn't have been all that positive. For example, he writes that Jews were expelled "peacefully" from a Muslim community, and then that: "only slightly more than one percent of Medina's Jewish population" were killed during this expulsion. Perhaps our definitions of "peaceful" differ.

And there there are his translations. Having no Arabic of my own, it is difficult for me to comment in any depth, but when I read a translation of a seventh century text that uses words like "atom" (p. 213), my anachronism flag is raised. If Aslan can so deliberately falsify his source text to add to its legitimacy, what other dishonesty might he have committed? His entire interpretation of the situation in Islam, both past and present, is called in question.

One of the grossest and most reprehensible examples appears in his (brief) discussion of the veil. As the only voice for the idea that the veil is a sexist tradition, Aslan refers to Alfred, Lord Cromer. Rather than dismissing his arguments (which is given so little page room that I can only assume they are inadequately presented), he writes: "Never mind that Cromer was the founder of the Men's League for Opposing Women's Suffrage in England" (p. 73). As though this one man and his personal character embodied the whole of the argument against the veil. As though discrediting a century old British lord was a legitimate way to respond to an argument that has so many promoters - many of whom are female, many Muslim, and many both. This is such a dishonest tactic that it even has its own name - the ad hominem fallacy.

I could go on. I filled many pages of notes during my reading, but this was never intended to be a page-by-page commentary.

This is an interesting book of apologetics from a more 'moderate' Muslim and it brings up qutie a few interesting ideas and arguments. The problem, however, is Aslan's inability to rationally consider and counter any opinions that he does not share. Reading this, I got the distinct impression that anyone who disagrees with him is quickly labelled as a Sunni tyrant/terrorist or a Western neo-colonialist. Aslan shows himself in numerous examples to be dishonest and, to make the identification of his lies and half-truths all the more difficult for the reader, he hides them behind a perfectly reasonable writing style.

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in Islam, or to Muslims wanting to learn about different perspectives. However, reader beware: read with several grains of salt handy.