Eleanor Nesbitt

Ahh yes, another post-structuralist attempt at deconstructing a religion which posits the absoluteness of truth and its primacy in human life. Nesbitt takes over from where the notorious McLeod left off after being caught red-handed fabricating evidence to back up his fallacious claims on the field of Sikh studies. The entire book is narrated in a monotone voice with Nesbitt resorting to her tried and tested tactic of throwing in the occasional line of hyped-up academic jargon where she fails to make a convincing argument (the whole book is full of this failure sadly) and otherwise dismissing the lived experience of Sikhs themselves. An insult to the Sikh faith and the impartial academics studying it. This would make the Victorian orientalists of yesteryear proud and that should indicate to you how far removed from reality this book is.… (more)

The author takes reader or interfaith pilgrimage. She champions and openness to our neighbors experiences of duty, devotion and divinity – demonstrating in the process an undiminished integrity as she journeys between faiths and writes of living out of engagement with a range of faith traditions. She sees something that emerges especially in our encounters with what is live active in others. She shows why we need to be aware of the particular linguistic and cultural lens through which we see the world, and to be willing, for example, to catch a glimpse of truth in the very unfamiliarity of our neighbors' worship.… (more)

Solidly fine, but that's about it; this book is very strangely structured, and uninterested in answering even the most basic questions about the beliefs that feed into Sikh practices. It's nice to know about those practices, of course, but without any context, it's hard to see why anyone is doing them. It's as if someone wrote about the various rituals of communion in Christianity without bothering to explain that Jesus is the son of God. Why are these people so obsessed with these little wafers of bread? It doesn't even taste good.… (more)