As the leading Muslim political spokesman and intellectual, Izetbegovi'c was imprisoned by the Yugoslavian government in 1983 for a 14-year sentence. During the six years he served in prison, Izetbegovi'c wrote notes on life issues, religion and culture, and politics and political philosophy. These reflections were smuggled out of prison and edited for publication along with a selection of letters from his family. After describing prison life, Izetbegovi'c has organized his reflections into sections. From his first note When I lose the reasons to live, I shall die, Izetbegovi'c provides a provocative collection of reflections that will interest scholars and researchers of contemporary Balkans, European Islam, and life during the last days of Communist Yugoslavia. (Courtesy: Ezania; Cover: Other Books, India)
1Rogue States: the Rule of Force in World Affairs by Noam Chomsky. Pub: Pluto Press, London, 2000. Pp: 252. Pbk: UK£10.99.
Steven Barboza’s book, American Jihad, is an inversion of the message of Emerson’s ‘Jihad in America’. Barboza uses the idea of jihad and the life of Malcolm X - a combination guaranteed to get most Americans’ attention - as starting-points for a discussion of the different ways American Muslims practise jihad.
Since its creation more than 50 years ago, Pakistan has been trapped in a crisis of identity. For the ruling elite, it has meant the continuation of raj by other means with all the attendant pomp, ceremony and priveleges.
This collection of ten essays, written between October 1971 and August 1975, is intended for the English-speaking, modem-educated Muslim in Muslim lands specifically and for the intelligentsia in Asia and Africa generally, in order to warn them of the fatal pitfalls of modernization; that to copy the West blindly and uncritically in everything does not provide any remedy for the social problems of the so-called "under-developed," "poor" countries of the East but rather will only aggravate the predicament in which they now find themselves in addition to creating numerous new troubles exported by the West under the slogan of "modernity." Since in these chapters, there is much overlapping of the various aspects of the same subject dealt with here, repetition could not be avoided. I only hope that the effect of this repetition on the reader will serve the purpose of emphasis rather than monotony.
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