John R. Bowen (2) (1951–)

"Are you still working on Blaming Islam?" asked the librarian, before turning bright red. "I mean...er...."

I'm still working on some of the issues that John Bowen raised in his book, Blaming Islam. Although the book did not thoroughly convince me of his viewpoint, the questions he raised have lingered in my thoughts, and this is, to me, proof that it was well worth the evening it took to read this small book.

The book is best approached as if it were the transcript of an evening lecture. It show more is written for a non-specialist audience, and briefly touches on different aspects of the vilification of Muslim immigrants in European and American societies. Bowen looks at the histories of exposure to and interaction with Muslim immigrants in different societies, the individual responses of the countries to these immigrant populations, and how these responses were guided by the different means of interaction and societal values, thereby complicating the issue beyond the simplistic "Muslim vs the West" and introducing the range of responses that have been taken in several countries with significant Muslim immigrant populations. Bowen also juxtaposes the historical facts of these responses with the current rhetoric of politicians who are playing to the anti-Muslim sentiments of their constituencies.

Bowen tackles an ambitious topic, and raises intriguing questions, but fails to fully address all the subtleties of current anti-Muslim, anti-multiculturalist, and anti-immigrant rhetoric. This would be upsetting in a larger study, but in a work that is intended as a short, easily digestible thought piece, it is not a serious flaw - the book is meant to engender further discussion, an invitation to critical responses and more careful attention to the issue of the way our societies integrate -or fail to integrate- these populations at a time when we are engaged in conflicts with Muslim societies on the global stage. show less

What do the French have against headscarves? The answer involves politics, philosophy, history, and economics, as well as fear, xenophobia, and the over-reaching power of the media. Many relevant lessions for U.S. readers.

The historical reasons start with Rousseau and Napoleon, and stretch to then Interior Minister (and now President) Nicolas Sarkozy.

The intellectual climate of modern France is presented, as well as France's anti-intellectual, fear-based xenophobia.

Bowen carefully explores show more the French concept of "laïcité", poorly translated into English as "secularism", but representing all that goes into a discussion of "separation of church and state". Much of the current debate on laïcité has its roots in the relations between the French State and the Catholic Church since the Revolution

France and the U.S. continue to have far more in common than either would like to admit. This book points out some of our differences too -- equally instructive. show less

n this book, an anthropologist analyzes political and cultural change among the Gayo, a Muslim people numbering about 200,000 who live in the highlands of northern Sumatra. John R.Bowen, who has lived among the Gayo shows how their successive absorption into both colonial and post-colonial states has led them to revise their ritual speaking, sung poetry, and historical narrative. Bowen discusses the phases that have characterized Gayo political and cultural history since 1900: the show more centralization of political structures and political narratives under Dutch colonial rule, the attempt to implement radically new nationalist and Islamic images of social order in the early years of independence, and the increasingly hierarchcial forms of control and discourse in the post-1965 New Order. He then examines the effect of these changes on Gayo poetics, finding that there have been consistent shifts in the forms of narrative, rhyme, and dialogue. Each shift has brought greater continuity in poetic form and has increasingly represented power as centralized. This work contributes to the comparative study of Indonesian societies. As a study in poetics, it deals with the social context for changes in the form and context of several distinct expressive genres. And as a case study in historical anthropology, it examines the changing, open-ended relationship of political processes and cultural forms. show less

"In this rich account of a Muslim society in highland Sumatra, John Bowen describes how men and women debate among themselves ideas of what Islam is and should be"