Product Description
Part travelogue, part memoir, this riveting book charts the rise of radical Islam in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country and one long considered the least hospitable to any kind of religious fundamentalism…. More >>
My Friend the Fanatic: Travels with a Radical Islamist
Angela Iler
This is a very interesting book about a subject that most Americans are afraid to even approach in the post-911 world – Islamists. The author helps to put individual faces on a group so often stereotyped and feared. These are people with hopes and needs that cover the entire spectrum, from simply the safety and prosperity of their families to the desire to rid the world of infidels. I must admit that before this book, I knew next to nothing about about Islam, only what the media has intended me to see (and there is something truly frightening about that). A great read for someone like me that may not be very knowledgeable, but is very interested in other cultures.
Rating: 4 / 5
FBC
Through the gentle yet witty voice of the narrator, I find myself transported to Indonesia and for the first time, from the inside out, understand what Islam is about. I would recommend this book to anyone curious about Islam and Indonesia beyond the skindeep coverage in the news.
Rating: 5 / 5
Pranay Gupte
I would rate Sadanand Dhume’s work as one of the most readable books on Islam and its contents and discontents. Dhume is a superb, sensitive reporter, and has endless stamina and courage. His narrative flows lucidly. You will want to read his book again and again.
Rating: 5 / 5
M. Bernstine
I just finished “My Friend the Fanatic, Travels with a Radical Islamist”, the first, and hopefully not the last, book by Sadanand Dhume. I heard of it through a review by Paul Berman who said he couldn’t put it down. I had the same experience. Though the names and words in Arabic and Indonesian were like pebbles in my mind’s-eye mouth (I did what I do with a Russian novel, just skip over the name without pronouncing it in my head), the experience of following Dhume around Indonesia was lively and felt real. I also think the point made about means and ends of imposing sharia is important and true, yet in the book tempered by an understanding of an individual who is struggling in that context (Herry, a muslim Indonesian journalist). Herry, at the end of the story, converted fully into radical Islamism, conjures the dull ache of 1984 or the transformed in The Body Snatchers.
Rating: 4 / 5
JMB
Sadanand Dhume’s My Friend the Fanatic: Travels with a Radical Islamist, investigates Indonesian’s advancement toward Sharia law. The author provides a firsthand account on the many Islamic movements inside Indonesia that are contributing to this change. As a participant observer and yet an outsider to Islam, Dhume writes an ethnography with the aid of his key informant, Herry, a radical Islamic magazine writer who is able to arrange interesting meetings, interviews, and tours inside Indonesia’s radical movements. These include such infamous figures like the alleged mastermind behind the 2002 Bali bombing, Abu Bakar Bashir, infamous schools like Ngruki and Gontor in Java, and radical Islamic groups like Jemaah Islamiyah. The purpose of these meetings is for the author to provide his audience with a clearer understanding of where, “things were headed, what Indonesia would look like in ten years or twenty [years]” (Dhume, 5). The purpose of this book review is to verify whether or not the content of Dhume’s book supports this goal.
The book is written for anyone with an interest in radical Islam, including people with no prior knowledge to leading experts who have studied the topic for years. The author, Sadanand Dhume, is able to write for such a wide ranging audience because he provides both a clear historical context and inserts himself into such unique situation that allows him to provide new information. The historical context does two things; providing a working frame of knowledge so that people new to Islam and those with expert knowledge can fully understand how he comes to his conclusions. Likewise, his writing is relevant to anyone reading the book because it is new information that both someone new to Islam and a leading expert in the field would not have known otherwise.
Dhume organizes his book into two parts that are accompanied with a prologue and epilogue. The first part titled Java, contains different chapters that serve to introduce Dhume as a journalist writing for important international publications and his intention for writing this book. He outlines the history of Indonesia throughout part one, including the conflict that separates the Nationalists from the Islamists and comparing radical Islam in one place compared to another by meeting with anyone from the ordinary radical Muslim to important figureheads of radical Islamist movements. In part two, Dhume continues in a similar format integrating the history of different regions and cities of Indonesia with his actual visits to these places and the ideas he forms. He uses the history and his new experiences to explain the reason behind such changes in radical Islam and its growing popularity.
The important distinction between these two parts is the bias and judgments Dhume makes. In part one Dhume’s writing is close to being objective as he makes little to no judgments about Islam. This helps the book’s overall argument about radical Islam because it forces the reader to interpret what Dhume experiences with his or her own opinion. It is only towards the end of part one where the reader can see that Dhume is showing his negative judgments of radical Islam. In part two this becomes the focus of Dhume book. This is actually a positive aspect of the book because by the time the reader would have began forming real founded opinions based on the relatively unbiased information about radical Islam, Dhume then gives his actual opinions. He writes in his epilogue that upon returning to Indonesia a few years later that, “Islamist orthodoxy and Islamist politics continued to batter heterodox Muslims, non-Muslims and women, and to undermine such bedrock democratic values as freedom of speech and freedom of conscience” (Dhume, 264). Dhume’s story incorporates more personal interactions he experienced to support his argument; that radical Islam undermines all of society’s efforts of being tolerant and promoting democracy.
However, because Dhume is writing for such a wide-ranging audience he sometimes gets stuck making generalizations. He writes about the Javanese Muslim identity as a whole saying that, “With the exception of the Islamists, the Javanese did not generally confuse being Muslim with being Arab” (Dhume, 18). He goes on to write that the Javanese “bent Islam to their culture rather than the other way around” (Dhume, 18). While there may be truth to those statements, it also suggests that he is trying to simplify complicated situations. It is these generalizations that help make this book flow better enabling the person with little background to grasp these complicated situations. But at the same time it gives the reader with little background on Islam, a rather naive view.
Despite these generalizations, he does provide excellent content to draw opinions from his conversations with radical Muslims. A big theme is Dhume’s focus on radical Muslim logic. Dhume interviews an important Muslim politician seeking to implement Sharia law. The politician, Awwas, is asked about the upcoming election and without being asked he tells Dhume that, “A woman could not be president” (Dhume, 113). He recounts a folktale involving the Prophet Solomon and a queen to prove this point. On other occasions Dhume reveals his conclusions about the people and groups he meets. After visiting a radical Muslim school that restricts many aspects of the life of its students, he reflects, “No great writers or painters or scientists, let alone chess grandmasters or orchestra conductors, could emerge from their classrooms. The school was like an amoeba, able to reproduce only itself” (Dhume, 135). It is examples of logic like from the politician and these interesting opinions as we writes about the school that the books shows itself as a valuable tool in understanding radical Islam. Even more, it’s the ordinary followers of radical Islam that accomplish Dhume’s goal in writing the book. The best example of this is his discussion with a Muslim educated factory worker. They discuss other religions and races and she provides faulty logic and many opinions about the Chinese, Jews, and Osama Bin Laden that would be called conspiracy theories in most other societies. The combination of his discussions with ordinary people, politicians, spiritual leaders, and the questions he asks them do further Dhume’s goal of writing this book. He writes a detailed but clear explanation of where Indonesia is headed in the future and therefore accomplishes his purpose.
Rating: 4 / 5