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Islam in the World, de Malise Ruthven (Penguin; 472 páginas; 42,76 reais)

O irlandês Malise Ruthven fez bom uso de seu treinamento duplo, como jornalista e historiador universitário das religiões, nessa obra de apresentação do Islã. Seu texto mistura impressões colhidas em viagens por países do Oriente com discussões bastante densas das crenças, práticas e instituições muçulmanas. O capítulo chamado "A visão de mundo do Corão" é exemplar da maneira ampla e inteligente como o autor aborda seus temas: a discussão cobre dos aspectos éticos e religiosos do livro sagrado dos islâmicos às questões de estilo literário e de linguagem. Lançado originalmente em 1984, o livro recebeu uma segunda edição ampliada em 2000. Num longo pós-escrito, Ruthven trata de temas como a fatwa (sentença de morte) decretada contra o escritor inglês Salman Rushdie pelas autoridades religiosas do Irã e o surgimento do Talibã, a milícia fundamentalista que hoje governa o Afeganistão. O autor é simpático aos muçulmanos, mas sem abandonar o espírito crítico (por exemplo, quando fala da resistência dos líderes religiosos a autorizar reformas). Transformado em clássico instantâneo, Islam in the World é considerado o melhor volume de introdução ao islamismo disponível no mercado.

. Trecho do livro (em inglês)

Islam and terrorism

With the involvement of Islamist activists in conflicts in different political theatres, the impression of Islam as a 'violent" religion has been gaining graoud in teh media. This inturn has led to accusations of "Islamophobia". Muslim critcs and their sympathizers argue that the media give a destorted impression by placing disproportionate emphasis on acts of violence committed in the name of Islam and by operating a "double standard". Acts of violence committed by terrorists fromreligious backgrounds other than Islamic or Jewish are usually described in non-religious terms: for example, the messianic apocalypticism that erupted with disastrous results at Waco, Texas in 1993 was never described as "Cristian", though its prophet David Koresh was steeped in the Old and New Testaments and nearly all his followers were recruited from Seventh Day Adventist Churches. In the Northern Ireland conflict atrocities are are atrributed to "republicans" or loyalists" rather than to "catholics" or "protestants", although the religious affiliations of the various paramilitary groups are universally known and understood.

Terrorism, of course, is notoriously difficult to define objectively, since one person´s terroris is another´s freedom fighter. Defined by Augustus Richard Norton as the "deliberate and random uses of violence for political ends against protected [i.e. non-combatant] groups´, it has historic roots in the Middle East, but is far from being exclusive to one confession. Arguably, the first modern act of politicall terrorism in the region was the bombing of the King David hotel in Jerusalem by Irgun Zvai Leumi led by Menachem Begin; the assassinations of Lord Moyne, the Britsh minister, and Count Bernadotte, the UN mediator, by Jewish extremists long preceded taht of AnwarSadat by their Muslim conteparts. The Sabra and Chatila massacres, connived at if not actively encoouraged by the Israeli army and by the Israeli bombings of Palestinian camps Lebanon (where victims of cluster bombs were rarely seen on televison) have cost many more non-combatant lives than atrocities committed by Palestians.

Nevertheless, Norton´s observation that phrases such as "Islamic terrorism" significantlys misrepresent the religious roots of violence committed by Muslim´s does bit entirely dispose of the problem, There is a religious dimension to much modern terrorism and it is not just related to dhe VIP treatmene martyrs expect in paradise. The Manichaean division of the world between the People of God and the rest (pagans, infidels, gentiles) is a form of absolutism which dehumanizes the "other" as ruthlesslys as the secular ideologies of nationalism and class conflict; but, while Nazism theories to sanction mass murder, the new generation of revolutionary terrorists finds its justification in relugious texts.