Talal Asad on Suicide Bombing

Not my review, and the only reason I highlight this review is because the reviewer gets it: The authors admit that their book “concentrates primarily on Muslim women who are actively affirming Islam.” Skeptics, doubters and agnostics are scarcely acknowledged (Irshad Manji, the controversial author of the important work The Trouble With Islam, is disposed of in a paragraph). The book’s unstated focus is Sunni Islam and the (African-American) Nation of Islam. Little attention is paid to women’s experiences in Ahmadiyyah, Ismaili Shia or Twelver Shia communities—all of which are thriving in the United States. (The Islamic scholar Linda Walbridge’s…