Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here: Untold Stories from the Fight Against Muslim Fundamentalism

by Karima Bennoune

Overview

"Compelling, meticulously researched…[S]hould be required reading." —Washington Post

In Pakistan, Faizan Peerzada staged a performing arts festival despite bomb attacks. In Algeria, radio comedian Mohamed Ali Allalou lampooned fundamentalists on the airwaves. Karima Bennoune illuminates these and other inspiring stories of the Muslim writers, artists, doctors, lawyers, activists, and educators who often risk death to combat the rising tide of religious extremism within their own countries. From Karachi to Tunis, Kabul to Tehran, these heroic trailblazers represent one of the best hopes for ending fundamentalist oppression worldwide.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393350258
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	12/08/2014
Pages:	448
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Karima Bennoune is a professor of international law at the University of California–Davis School of Law. She grew up in Algeria and the United States and now lives in northern California.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Everything Looks Different Once You Have Seen "Death To" Before Your Name 1

Chapter 1 Creativity versus the Dark Corner: Tales from the Muslim Culture Wars 30

Chapter 2 Karachi Open Mic: Guardians of Cultural Space 62

Chapter 3 The Imam's Liberated Daughter and Other Stories: Women Battling Beyond Stereotypes 81

Chapter 4 To Speak Out and Die: Journalists Writing for Their Lives 126

Chapter 5 Growing Roses in the Triangle of Death 156

Chapter 6 Reading Spinoza in Tehran 190

Chapter 7 The Ramadan Basketball Tournament 215

Chapter 8 Why I Hate Al Qaeda: Surviving and Challenging Fundamentalist Terrorism 234

Chapter 9 Sidi Bouzid Blues and the Green Wave: Journeys through the Arab Spring and Fall 268

Chapter 10 The People of Al Qaedastan: Voices from Northern Mali 299

Chapter 11 A Baby Cries at Qalandia Checkpoint: Opposing Injustice in the Struggle against Muslim Fundamentalism 313

Conclusion: Raise Your Voice While Singing Is Still Possible 330

Notes 343

Acknowledgments 373

Index 377

Editorial Reviews

"[Bennoune’s] reporting is diligent, passionate and convincing…[Her] strongest stories are also her most bitterly personal…With courage and empathy, she takes readers to hardscrabble streets where Islamist militias unleashed a wave of almost indiscriminate butchery."

Economist

"These are stories of resistance and resilience…that are seldom, if ever, told by mainstream Western media…Bennoune has written a very necessary book indeed, and it is to be hoped that it will find the widest audience possible."

Times Higher Education - Julia Droeber

"Extraordinary stories…These varied and unremitting testimonies to this unarmed war shatter the monolith we have conjured up and dubbed ‘the Muslim world.’"

Daily Beast

"Fascinating and often heartbreaking."

Los Angeles Times - Lorraine Ali

"Stirring and urgent."

Boston Globe

"[Bennoune’s] reporting is diligent, passionate and convincing…[Her] strongest stories are also her most bitterly personal…With courage and empathy, she takes readers to hardscrabble streets where Islamist militias unleashed a wave of almost indiscriminate butchery."

Economist

"A powerful and captivating tribute to those brave women and men who have stood up to fundamentalist violence in their own countries from Afghanistan to Mali, this book will hopefully inspire a new and improved international human rights response."

Mary Robinson

"A compelling, meticulously researched account of the legions of Muslims whose struggles against fundamentalist violence are almost never reported in our media…. Required reading."

Rachel Newcomb

"Starred review. Her interviews sear with passion as her subjects deconstruct false views of Islam and inaccurate readings of the Qur’an. Again and again, Bennoune shines a spotlight on those who battle with intelligence and creativity against guns and bloodlust. She has created a significant and compelling record of modern life in which she spares no one, from the right wing to the left."

Booklist

"Courageous and passionate, illuminating the confiscated lives of secularists, religious minorities, and Muslims alike. Yet what is striking is not their victimhood but their resilience and resistance—that is where hope lies."

Azar Nafisi

"This work redefines courage in a humbling dimension. Bennoune’s meticulous testament serves as a warning to the complacent and rebukes ‘politically correct’ posturing that makes excuses for the inexcusable and canvasses tolerance for the intolerable."

Wole Soyinka

"For too long, these types of voices, those Muslims who stand for individual freedom, debate, creativity, and compassion, have been ignored. But if we are ever to defeat the extremists, the counter narratives they provide to the distorted version of Islam need to be heard loud and clear."

Ali Soufan

Algerian American Bennoune (international law, Sch. of Law, Univ. of California, Davis), who has long researched global human rights issues, looks at the everyday resistance of ordinary Muslims to religious fundamentalism. The author spent three years investigating grass-roots opposition to religious fundamentalism in several Muslim-majority countries, largely in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia. She recounts how a broad spectrum of Muslims, ranging from educators, journalists, lawyers, and women's rights activists to a comic book creator and street vendors, wage a persistent struggle against fundamentalists who seek to redefine Islamic cosmopolitanism into their own narrow and intolerant version of religious discourse. As Bennoune explains, many of these heroic individuals have to carry on a dual-front war, opposing fundamentalism among their own coreligionists while also facing the rising tide of anti-Muslim prejudice from the West. Those interviewed have a variety of religious perspectives, ranging from the secular to the devout and observant. VERDICT This accessible and remarkable book should be of interest to all human rights activists and those who wish to understand Muslim conflicts with fundamentalism.—Nader Entessar, Univ. of South Alabama, Mobile

Library Journal

A human rights lawyer scours the global hotspots for stories of Muslim push back to fundamentalism. Fired with a sense of outrage, Bennoune (Law/Univ. of California, Davis) applies the lessons she learned from her professor and activist father, Mahfoud Bennoune--put on the "kill list" by fundamentalist extremists in Algeria in the early 1990s--in meeting the challenge of today's fundamentalists. Muslim fundamentalism--which the author defines carefully as an extreme-right movement that achieves political aims by manipulating religion, embracing absolutism, limiting women's rights and other human rights, denouncing secularism and advocating the imposition of narrowly defined Sharia--actually perpetuates much more violence against Muslims than against Westerners. The fallacy entertained by the Western left, such as her former employer she takes to task, Amnesty International, is that some forms of Islamic fundamentalism can be moderate or appear palatable (skillful as such groups are in "double discourse"), such as the freshly washed face of the Islamic Brotherhood. This is mostly due to the fact that the West desperately needs to believe "someone has to control those Muslims." However, Bennoune is uncompromising in presenting tales from the trenches of the terror imposed by these ideologically driven governments: arts groups for children in Lahore, Pakistan, targeted for bombing since music was declared haram (shameful); cinemas burned in Herat, Afghanistan; women stoned in Nigeria; polygamy encouraged by Hamas and on the rise in Gaza; journalists killed for speaking out from Algeria to Pakistan. Yet the author's account brings to light the courageous few who do stand up at the peril of losing their lives--e.g., many women who have had enlightened fathers who supported their education, like the author. Bennoune, and those she profiles, bravely meets the tide of extremism with a sense of shared community and nonviolent purpose.

Kirkus Reviews