The Assassins: A Radical Sect in Islam |
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Bernard Lewis
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Pages: 176 (Paperback)
ISBN: 184212451X
Pub: Weidenfeld & Nicolson History
Pub date: 2003-02-06
Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 90199
Reader Reviews:
Kind of disappointing (10/12 people found this helpful)
This book about the Ismailis and the Assassins could have been fascinating but it is only a compilation of facts and details about individuals and their actions. We never get into the deeper layers of their ideology, theology and religious beliefs and practices. They are connected to the Shi’ites agains the Sunni’ites but it is not clearly shown and explained what’s the difference between the two sides and what’s more how the Ismailis get into this picture. Altogether the vision of Islam given by this book is that of a world rent by factions, ambitions, personal power, military achievements, and the basic and irrepressible desire and need to be cruel and shed a lot of blood through torturing and making people suffer. This is a caricature. Never the filiation between the other semitic religions that judaism, christianism and the zealot branch of both in the first century before Christ and the first century after Christ were, is shown, stated or explained and explored. Islam is one descendent of the Bible, Old and New Testament. What’s more this vast expanse of territory from the Mediterranean sea to India was one of the most brilliant melting pots of science, culture and philosophy, the Ismailis among them just as much as the Sh’ites or the Sunni’ites. This is not explored, nor explained. Hence this book accumulates factual details and data but never reaches any level of explanation, understanding and the desire to go and discover that enormously progressive and powerful culture and science. At the time of the Crusades, the west was definitely, at all levels, a lot less advanced than the Middle East and Islamic countries. It is these Crusades that started the movement thet will eventually lead to the freezing of these societies in some kind of ossified ancient state out of which it has become extremely difficult to move, and such a move has to be endogenous, to come from inside.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, Université Paris Dauphine, Université Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne
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Categories
Amazon.co.uk places this book into the following categories:
Books -> Subjects -> History -> Religious History -> Islam
Books -> Subjects -> History -> General
Books -> Subjects -> Society, Politics & Philosophy -> Government & Politics -> Civil Liberties & Political Activism -> Political Violence -> Terrorism & Freedom Fighters
Books -> Subjects -> Religion & Spirituality -> General
Books -> Subjects -> Religion & Spirituality -> Islam
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