Scan barcode
A review by muzzamilaminferrin
The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain by María Rosa Menocal, Harold Bloom
4.0
A very engaging history of medieval Spain. Focuses on the intellectual history. Arranged in the form of a series of vignettes rather than a chronological history. Begins with the arrival of the first Muslim ruler from Syria and continues after the fall of the Umayyads to look at the ways Muslim Al-Andalus influenced later European culture. It is a fascinating history.
A couple of complaints:
(1) The author is telling a story of the pluralism and openness of the Umayyads which was replaced by the conservative Almoravids and then Almohads and contrasted by the less tolerant Christians in the rest of Europe at the time. In the interest of that narrative, I think she exaggerates the intolerance and backwardness of the North African Berber Muslims. I'm not an expert on this history, but the Almoravids seem to have been very conservative adherents to the Maliki madhab, but the Almohads, who were followers of Shafi'i, had a much more complex theology that incorporated various schools of thought.
(2) I felt the book was a bit unfair to the intellectual legacy of Al-Ghazzali. He was one of the most important thinkers in the history of Islamic theology and philosophy, yet the author dismisses him as a conservative who was roundly defeated by Ibn Rushd. It also was a little jarring for me personally that she referred to him as Algazel. Other Muslims were referred to by their Latinized names (Ibn Rushd as Averroes, Ibn Sina as Avicenna, etc) but since Al-Ghazzali is less well known outside of Muslim circles, I was a little put off by the use of Algazel. In general I think the decision to use Latinized names for Arab and Persian writers is a little weird since Arabic and Persian names aren't really that hard to pronounce.
(3) The author treats the history of the Islamic world after the fall of Al-Andalus as if it fell into anti-intellectual religious conservatism and never produced anything valuable afterwards. This ignores the cultures further East that continued to produce great works of art and writing including people like Rumi and Hafez in Persia, Ibn Taymiyyah and Ibn Nafis in Syria, Ibn Khaldun and Ibn Battuta in North Africa, etc.
(4) The afterword claims that the attacks on 9/11 were the result of religious intolerance on the part of Muslims. This is, in my view, both inaccurate and offensive. Although Bin Laden used religious language to justify his actions, they were political in nature, the result of injustices committed by a variety of actors including the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Israel. While it's true that the loudest voices in Islam have taken a turn towards conservatism and intolerance, the majority of the world's Muslims do not support violence and the author's language in this section feeds Islamophobia. The final section made me realize that although I enjoyed the book and would recommend it, I have to add the caution that one of the main implications of the overarching narrative is a repeat of the tired neoliberal message of "good Muslim vs bad Muslim" in which "good Muslims" are secular and don't take their religion "too seriously" and any Muslim who resists assimilation into American secular culture is a "bad Muslim."
A couple of complaints:
(1) The author is telling a story of the pluralism and openness of the Umayyads which was replaced by the conservative Almoravids and then Almohads and contrasted by the less tolerant Christians in the rest of Europe at the time. In the interest of that narrative, I think she exaggerates the intolerance and backwardness of the North African Berber Muslims. I'm not an expert on this history, but the Almoravids seem to have been very conservative adherents to the Maliki madhab, but the Almohads, who were followers of Shafi'i, had a much more complex theology that incorporated various schools of thought.
(2) I felt the book was a bit unfair to the intellectual legacy of Al-Ghazzali. He was one of the most important thinkers in the history of Islamic theology and philosophy, yet the author dismisses him as a conservative who was roundly defeated by Ibn Rushd. It also was a little jarring for me personally that she referred to him as Algazel. Other Muslims were referred to by their Latinized names (Ibn Rushd as Averroes, Ibn Sina as Avicenna, etc) but since Al-Ghazzali is less well known outside of Muslim circles, I was a little put off by the use of Algazel. In general I think the decision to use Latinized names for Arab and Persian writers is a little weird since Arabic and Persian names aren't really that hard to pronounce.
(3) The author treats the history of the Islamic world after the fall of Al-Andalus as if it fell into anti-intellectual religious conservatism and never produced anything valuable afterwards. This ignores the cultures further East that continued to produce great works of art and writing including people like Rumi and Hafez in Persia, Ibn Taymiyyah and Ibn Nafis in Syria, Ibn Khaldun and Ibn Battuta in North Africa, etc.
(4) The afterword claims that the attacks on 9/11 were the result of religious intolerance on the part of Muslims. This is, in my view, both inaccurate and offensive. Although Bin Laden used religious language to justify his actions, they were political in nature, the result of injustices committed by a variety of actors including the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Israel. While it's true that the loudest voices in Islam have taken a turn towards conservatism and intolerance, the majority of the world's Muslims do not support violence and the author's language in this section feeds Islamophobia. The final section made me realize that although I enjoyed the book and would recommend it, I have to add the caution that one of the main implications of the overarching narrative is a repeat of the tired neoliberal message of "good Muslim vs bad Muslim" in which "good Muslims" are secular and don't take their religion "too seriously" and any Muslim who resists assimilation into American secular culture is a "bad Muslim."