Among the believers
The author focuses on the role of religion, as he sees it, in affecting the creative and intellectual resources needed by nations to develop on their own.The author describes a six-month journey across the Asian continent. V.S. Naipaul explores the culture and the explosive situation in countries where Islamic fundamentalism was growing. His travels start with Iran, on to Pakistan, Malaysia and end in Indonesia, with a short stop in Pakistan and Iran on the return to the UK. (Book content).
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2013–2026years
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What Hacker News says
- I agree with you about Qatari influence. You bring up Iran's history. In the 1979 revolution, Marxists were the leading exponents in Iran, seconded by the theocrats. The Ayatollah talked a good game about reconciliation from France, until he came back and wiped the Socialists out in short order. [If you haven't read Among the Believers by VS Naipaul, check it out - it's one of the most engaging books I've ever read].
So somehow the Iranian socialists failed to see that Khomeini was a reactionary even worse than the Shah, until it was too late. So this alignment is not new, but it's still completely mind-boggling. For instance: Every progressive leftist I know in the US hates the church they grew up in, hates Christianity, hates religion. I'm an atheist myself, so I don't care about that. But then they can somehow idolize Islamic theocratic regimes that are far more totalitarian than even the rigid culture they grew up in. Why that? Ignorance, post-colonial guilt, some racist idea that brown people don't have the same thoughts and agency to rebel against bad ideas? Yeah, Qatari money in the universities is part of it, but this has been going on longer than that.
Here's a theory: They're what Hannah Arendt called, in Origins of Totalitarianism, "superfluous men", outcasts of the educated elite who are attracted to any utopian belief, no matter how murderous. The more murderous the better, actually. Because they have an unearned dissatisfaction and an unearned sense of grievance, coupled with a righteous sense of anger about things they know very little about.
- Eric Hoffer - The True Believer. Why people are seduced by mass movements, whether political or religious.
V.S. Naipaul - Among the Believers. A collection of vignettes about Islam in non-Arab countries.
Reza Aslan - No God But God, Beyond Fundamentalism. A non boring history of Islam. An explanation of the difference between jihadic and nationalistic movements in Islam.
Deer Hunting With Jesus - Joe Bageant. Why poor white Americans vote Republican.
Robert D. Kaplan - Imperial Grunts, Hog Pilots, Monsoon, Revenge of Geography. First two are a look into the current state of deployed US Military. Monsoon is about the importance of the Indian Ocean area, and Revenge of Geography is about the importance of geography in shaping geopolitics.
John McPhee - Annals of the Former World. History of North America from a geological perspective.
- For someone who wrote such guff about Pakistan in Among the Believers, it's interesting to read about his second wife (and her brother Amir's tangles with the Pakistan Army he served in)
- Not this exact quote. But something like this is a theme in many of his books, often applied to himself, and to other people who've moved to western countries (or, into western-derived cultures).
It's also close to a theme of Among the Believers etc, where (to paraphrase crudely!) he comes to view non-arab muslims as being in some sense immigrants to an Arab-centred culture, with some of the same feelings of loss.
