Acclaimed writer V.S. Naipaul has the eye of a novelist, the fearless curiosity of a 2-year-old, and the tenacity of a cornered badger. In Beyond Belief, he puts these three attributes to use in delving into the secrets of Islam--the other Islam, that is. Journeying into the non-Arab Islamic countries of Indonesia, Iran, Pakistan, and Malaysia, Naipaul wonders about how these young nations are absorbing a resurgent Islam into their ancient societies and where it might lead them. His exploration is at the grassroots level, through the people living and breathing Islam today. Naipaul illustrates his points with vignettes about characters he meets, by both happenstance and calculation, along the way. We learn about their histories, their families' histories, their motivations, and their dreams. The mosaic that materializes is not always appealing, for Naipaul is a sensitive but disinterested observer, more a watcher than a champion. Islam, we learn, is a font of hope for the converted peoples, sweet when taken in gulps but often bearing an acrid aftertaste. It buries traditional cultures under promising new foundations, indirectly encourages broken families through polygamy, and turns only tentatively to face the issues of modernity. From beginning to end, we find ourselves empathizing with Naipaul's subjects, seeing ourselves in their struggles with family, religion, and nation, feeling their drive to create a fresh world of virtue and prosperity. --Brian Bruya


From Publishers Weekly
In this spiritual travelogue, novelist and essayist Naipaul picks up where he left off in his earlier Among the Believers (1981). Whereas in that earlier work he focused primarily on his own stories of his encounters with the revolutionary potential of Islam in Iran, Pakistan, Indonesia and Malaysia, here he allows individuals in those countries to tell their own stories about their experiences with the Islamic faith. Crucial to Naipaul's argument is what he sees as the imperialism of Islam. "Everyone who is not an Arab who is a Muslim is a convert. Islam is not simply a matter of conscience or private belief. It makes imperial demands.... The disturbance for societies is immense, and even for a thousand years can remain unsolved." In Iran, for example, a young teacher remembers with anguish and cool reflection giving up his university education to be a part of Khomeini's religious revolution, only later to be jailed and almost killed by the Revolutionary Guards for failing to give Khomeini unwavering support. Naipaul also recounts the story of an Indonesian leader who integrated Western technology with his Muslim faith in order to gain a lucrative job in the Suharto administration. Naipaul's luminous prose provides glimpses of insight into the lives of ordinary people whose dedication and commitment to the practice of Islam is the foundation of their lives. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
A Trinidadian of Indian ancestry who was educated in England, Naipaul has 22 books (both fiction and nonfiction) to his credit. In Among the Believers (1981), he sharply described the damaging effect of rising Islamic fundamentalism in the four predominantly Muslim but non-Arab countries, which he had visited: Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan and Iran. The constant note of his many interviews was that fundamentalist monomania gradually kills a society, destroying tolerance and pluralism and uprooting people from their history. Visiting the same countries again over the past decade, and talking to many of the same people, he lays out in Beyond Belief the even greater social damage the years have brought: conformity enforced and dissidence suppressed, women's social progress reversed, poverty increased, honored customs abandoned, families disrupted, other religions oppressed, and paranoia rampant. Both readable and thoughtful, this book is highly recommended for both academic and public libraries.AJames F. DeRoche, Alexandria, VACopyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The Wall Street Journal, Eric Ormsby
Mr. Naipaul may not be interested in conveying the inner religious life of Iranian or Pakistani or Malaysian Muslims--perhaps he would dismiss the very attempt as specious--but the distinctive human voices he captures and the sense he creates of obscure but unforgettable individuals struggling with incomprehensible forces make Beyond Belief, for all its tendentiousness, a compelling book.


The New York Times, Richard Bernstein
...an extremely interesting, intimate and valuable set of portraits, even if Beyond Belief is also analytically vague, abstract despite the concreteness of its descriptions.


From Booklist
Naipaul wrote a book 17 years ago, in 1981, about being a Muslim in a non-Arab country. The book was Among the Believers, and it was based on Naipaul's travels among people converted to Islam in Indonesia, Iran, Pakistan, and Malaysia. The book was noteworthy, for Islam is an Arab religion; and, as Naipaul succinctly explains, Islam's holy places are in Arab lands and its "sacred language is Arabic." To believe in Islam means to reject one's history (and Christianity, too). Beyond Belief reveals new stories and continues some of the old ones from the previous book as Naipaul travels again in the four countries. He finds that the converted peoples have in common a history interrupted by imperialists or colonizers. Control of their lands is something they have recently gained. And Islam is a way of turning back the foreigners and reclaiming their country. At one point, Naipaul likens the conversion to a crossover "from old beliefs, earth religions, the cults of rulers and local deities . . . to the revealed religions--Christianity and Islam principally." It's interesting that Naipaul believes, as he states in his prologue, that he is less present in the telling this time around, that he is letting the people reveal themselves, which is an interesting tactic for such a passionate, opinionated writer. It is hardly conceivable that this work, with its tabloid journalism title, is not another Naipaul alarum. Bonnie Smothers


From Kirkus Reviews
The famous novelist follows up on a travel narrative he published in 1981, Among the Believers, that examined the practice and revolutionary tendencies of Islam in Pakistan, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Iran. Naipauls visit to Indonesia took place before the onset of the current ``Asian flu,'' at a time when the vast nation was enjoying a wave of prosperity. That prosperity, of course, has been very unevenly distributed. He notes, for instance, ancient neighborhoods and a unique vernacular architecture being knocked down to make way for glittering high-rises. Through interviews he portrays an Indonesian version of Islam triumphing peacefully over Hinduism, Catholicism, and even the remnants of Dutch colonialism, in large part by embracing Western technology and the faith of capitalism. Most instructive is Imaduddin, a man formerly at odds with the Suharto government but now one of its chief ministers, who took frequent refuge in the US but retains no affection for it. An engineer, he has had no trouble mingling his scientific training with an aggressive vision of Islams place in the worldand of Indonesias role in Islams rise. ``Islam is not simply a matter of conscience,'' says Naipaul. ``It makes imperial demands.'' This is even more apparent in Iran. Naipaul portrays a regime that has succeeded in disposing of every vestige of the shah but has yet to recover from its eight-year war with Iraq, and from the excesses of its own religious zeal. There are signs of liberation from the liberators, but Naipaul doesn't miss the human cost: a beautiful young woman in her black cloak, for instance, with a government job but no personal freedom, who retreats to her room every night and rages hysterically. Naipauls evocation of a corrupt Pakistan, passionately Islamic but unsure of itself as a nation, captures the vibrancy of the place, but his Iran is mournful and haunting. A measured view of Islamic countries from the point of view of ordinary people rather than propagandists or detractors. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"Brilliant. . . . A powerfully observed, stylistically elegant exploration." —The New York Times

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year

"The book's strength lies in Naipaul's extraordinary ability as a storyteller to draw striking portraits of a cross section of individuals."—The Boston Globe

Fourteen years after the publication of his landmark travel narrative Among the Believers, V. S. Naipaul returned to the four non-Arab Islamic countries he reported on so vividly at the time of Ayatollah Khomeini's triumph in Iran. Beyond Belief is the result of his five-month journey in 1995 through Indonesia, Iran, Pakistan, and Malaysia—lands where descendants of Muslim converts live at odds with indigenous traditions, and where dreams of Islamic purity clash with economic and political realities.

In extended conversations with a vast number of people—a rare survivor of the martyr brigades of the Iran-Iraq war, a young intellectual training as a Marxist guerilla in Baluchistan, an impoverished elderly couple in Teheran whose dusty Baccarat chandeliers preserve the memory of vanished wealth, and countless others—V. S. Naipaul deliberately effaces himself to let the voices of his subjects come through. Yet the result is a collection of stories that has the author's unmistakable stamp. With its incisive observation and brilliant cultural analysis, Beyond Belief is a startling and revelatory addition to the Naipaul canon.

"Highly accomplished. . . . Another display of Naipaul's remarkable talent." —The Independent (London)

SYNOPSIS

V.S. Naipaul has felt that his acceptance of his religion is a rejection of the culture he lives in. And, similarly, his distance from the Arab world -- for he believes Islam is fundamentally an Arabic religion -- is also a distance from his faith. In the early 1980s, Naipaul published Among the Beleivers, a collection of reflections on his travels in Indonesia, Pakistan, Iran, and Malaysia. At that time, the fundamentalist revolution in Iran was at its peak, Pakistan was a struggling and repressive South Asian nation, and Indonesia and Malaysia were trying to adapt to the demands of Western capitalism. Now, 15 years later, with Iran ever-so-slowly liberalizing, Pakistan making moves to be a world power, and Indonesia and Malaysia at the heart of both the Asian miracle and the Asian crisis, Naipaul returns to these countries in Beyond Belief. With one or more of these countries making the front pages of newspapers around the world almost every day, understanding the philosophical and practical expressions of religion is crucial to both understanding the nations and interpreting the news.

FROM THE CRITICS

Michael Ignatieff

Naipaul is an incomparable chronicler of sacred survivals and the desperation the sacred has to keep at bay. -- New York Times Book Review

Publishers Weekly

In this spiritual travelogue, novelist and essayist Naipaul picks up where he left off in his earlierAmong the Believers (1981). Whereas in that earlier work he focused primarily on his own stories of his encounters with the revolutionary potential of Islam in Iran, Pakistan, Indonesia and Malaysia, here he allows individuals in those countries to tell their own stories about their experiences with the Islamic faith. Crucial to Naipaul's argument is what he sees as the imperialism of Islam. "Everyone who is not an Arab who is a Muslim is a convert. Islam is not simply a matter of conscience or private belief. It makes imperial demands.... The disturbance for societies is immense, and even for a thousand years can remain unsolved." In Iran, for example, a young teacher remembers with anguish and cool reflection giving up his university education to be a part of Khomeini's religious revolution, only later to be jailed and almost killed by the Revolutionary Guards for failing to give Khomeini unwavering support. Naipaul also recounts the story of an Indonesian leader who integrated Western technology with his Muslim faith in order to gain a lucrative job in the Suharto administration. Naipaul's luminous prose provides glimpses of insight into the lives of ordinary people whose dedication and commitment to the practice of Islam is the foundation of their lives. (June)

Library Journal

A Trinidadian of Indian ancestry who was educated in England, Naipaul has 22 books (both fiction and nonfiction) to his credit. In Among the Believers (1981), he sharply described the damaging effect of rising Islamic fundamentalism in the four predominantly Muslim but non-Arab countries, which he had visited: Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan and Iran. The constant note of his many interviews was that fundamentalist monomania gradually kills a society, destroying tolerance and pluralism and uprooting people from their history. Visiting the same countries again over the past decade, and talking to many of the same people, he lays out in Beyond Belief the even greater social damage the years have brought: conformity enforced and dissidence suppressed, women's social progress reversed, poverty increased, honored customs abandoned, families disrupted, other religions oppressed, and paranoia rampant. Both readable and thoughtful, this book is highly recommended for both academic and public libraries.James F. DeRoche, Alexandria, VA

Kirkus Reviews

The famous novelist follows up on a travel narrative he published in 1981, Among the Believers, that examined the practice and revolutionary tendencies of Islam in Pakistan, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Iran. Naipaul's visit to Indonesia took place before the onset of the current "Asian flu," at a time when the vast nation was enjoying a wave of prosperity. That prosperity, of course, has been very unevenly distributed. He notes, for instance, ancient neighborhoods and a unique vernacular architecture being knocked down to make way for glittering high-rises. Through interviews he portrays an Indonesian version of Islam triumphing peacefully over Hinduism, Catholicism, and even the remnants of Dutch colonialism, in large part by embracing Western technology and the faith of capitalism. Most instructive is Imaduddin, a man formerly at odds with the Suharto government but now one of its chief ministers, who took frequent refuge in the US but retains no affection for it. An engineer, he has had no trouble mingling his scientific training with an aggressive vision of Islam's place in the world and of Indonesia's role in Islam's rise. "Islam is not simply a matter of conscience," says Naipaul. "It makes imperial demands." This is even more apparent in Iran. Naipaul portrays a regime that has succeeded in disposing of every vestige of the shah but has yet to recover from its eight-year war with Iraq, and from the excesses of its own religious zeal. There are signs of liberation from the liberators, but Naipaul doesn't miss the human cost: a beautiful young woman in her black cloak, for instance, with a government job but no personal freedom, who retreats to her room every night and rageshysterically. Naipaul's evocation of a corrupt Pakistan, passionately Islamic but unsure of itself as a nation, captures the vibrancy of the place, but his Iran is mournful and haunting. A measured view of Islamic countries from the point of view of ordinary people rather than propagandists or detractors.