OTHER VIEWS

The World Is A Book

I

East Northport, N. K.

don't think I've ever baked as
many cakes as I have since Sept.
11. Or prepared as many soups
0 r stews.
I favor dishes meant to last — no
souffles that take hours to assemble and
moments to eat. It's leftovers I want to
see: soup stored in the fridge, banana
bread wrapped up on the cake plate,
each improving as the days go by.
At first, I tried to fight my impulse to
flee to the kitchen, telling myself that I
belonged in my study, at the keyboard,

working. But then I gave up. If I need-
ed to see my family eating homemade
meals with gusto, well, that was a need
that could be easily gratified.
As we dig in, we talk about events of
the day, but just briefly. My kids are
coping enviably well precisely because
they don't dwell on what's happening.
Jake, 14, asks a couple of questions, and
then lets us know, by his wandering
attention, when he's had enough. From
him, I learned to take in only what I
can absorb, which means that our
house is now pretty much CNN-free.

Roberta Israeloff is a columnist for
JBooks. corn, an online book review site
published by Jewish Family 6- Life!, and
a member ofJewZcom Media Network.
Her e-mail address is

Judybf@jflmedia.com

His older brother, at college, talks
about world politics as globally as pos-
sible. He doesn't want to focus on
casualties, risks or the future. He
tends to begin conversations by say-
ing, "I'm thinking of traveling this
summer. Maybe going to Europe. Or
Israel."
Not this summer," we tell him.
Even before Sept. 11, we were a fami-
ly of scaredy-cats when it came to
planes. From the alacrity with which
he accepts our answers, I assume that
he's secretly pleased to have someone
settling boundaries for him.
Mostly, though, cakes and travel to
the side, it's been a season of unbear-
able contrasts. Sept. 11, after all, was a
picture-book fall day The black smoke
pouring out of the doomed buildings

couldn't have defiled a bluer, more
crystalline sky. And it was against this

backdrop of gorgeous weather that we
nursed our grief and anxiety.

Finite Versus Infinite

In my own family, there's a huge gap
as well. My life has never been easier
or richer. My children are thriving
(knock wood) and more self-sufficient
than they've ever been; my marriage is
going strong after a quarter century.
Within, peace; without, horror.
It's fitting that this has been a sea-

son of discrepancy, for the
crash into buildings.
war itself is about a gap —
Those of us who love the
between those who believe
book of the world know
in metaphor and those who
that fear is real, and hard
don't. As the novelist E.L.
to manage, but that we
Doctorow eloquently
must find a way to manage
explained in a radio inter-
it, as my family is learning
view, there are two types of
to do, without denying its
people (he was paraphrasing
reality.
Ralph Waldo Emerson):
ROBERTA
Our hearts are hypersen-
Those for whom the book is
sitive; our emotions com-
ISRAELOFF
a world, and those for
pose a delicate ecosystem: if
Special
whom the world is a book.
vve try to shut down any
Commentary
For those of us who see
one feeling, eventually all
the world as a book, everything is a
feelings shut down. Hardness in one
text that can be plumbed for mean-
chamber of the heart can't be con-
ing, debated, appreciated and derided.
tained. If we deny fear, then soon
Examining all phenomena, rejecting
enough we will deny love. That's
nothing a priori, is an inductive way
why zealots, who can't face their

of looking at life.

But if the book — the Koran, the
Torah — is a world, then the text is
finite. Instead of the openness of
induction, we are left with the claus-
trophobia of deduction. Everything
we need to know is right here,
between these covers. Everything else,
discard. Distrust. Devalue. Destroy.
Literalists, fundamentalists — in all
religions, whether Christian, Jewish or
Muslim — believe that the book is a
world. I think that they take this
cloistered position out of fear. The
world, as we well know, can be a fear-
some place. Planes can deliberately

fears, can justify killing in the name
of their cause.

As we approach Chanukah (the
first candle is lit at sundown Dec.
9), a season during which we open
ourselves to the possibility of mira-
cles, I'm thinking about embracing, -
not denying. The ways in which we
comforted ourselves in recent
months, the ways in which we've
learned to cope with our new reality,
are amusing and poignant, ridiculous

and just right. In other words,
they're infinite. The world is a book.
To place it between two covers is a
crime against the human heart.

❑

Treading Where We Shouldn't

Philadelphia

T

he U.S. government wants
you to know that the
Taliban, who yet rule part
of Afghanistan, are bad
Muslims. Instead, it should be show-
ing that they are totalitarian thugs.
There's a big difference.
When the Taliban destroyed the
ancient Buddhist statues in their
country early this year, Washington
repeatedly decried this demolition as
un-Islamic. It contradicts "one of
Islam's basic tenets — tolerance for
other religions," intoned the State
Department spokesman. It is "an act
of intolerance, which ... has, in our

view, nothing to do with Islam,"
declared one of his colleagues;
The Sept. 11 atrocities prompted

President George W. Bush to declare
that these "violate the fundamental

Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle
East Forum, can be reached via e-mail

at

11/30
2001

40

pipes@MEForum.org

tenets of the Islamic faith." His wife
issued a fatwa deeming the repression

of women in Afghanistan "not a mat-
ter of legitimate religious practice."
More broadly, a State Department fact
sheet asserts that the Taliban "misuse
Islam" to justify their "illegal and dis-
honorable" policies.
American officials even have the
nerve to instruct Muslims on how to
live their faith. "We accept that Islam
is the religion of most Afghans. They
can practice it in the way they want,"
the acting assistant secretary for South
Asian affairs conceded. But, he added,
their Islam "should be in a spirit of
toleration, in a spirit of acceptance of
other faiths and creeds."
Not surprisingly, the Taliban hotly
reject these admonishments. Two
days after President Bill Clinton in
1999 had called their treatment of
women "a terrible perversion" of
Islam, they replied, "Any criticism
regarding Afghanistan's Muslims and
women's rights should come from a
Muslim. This Clinton is not a Muslim

and does not know anything
lecture Muslims on Islam,"
about Islam and Muslims."
reads an internal State
Likewise, Bush's peculiar
Department memo that
statements about true Islam
bore the secretary of state's
being "nonviolent" spurred a
personal endorsement. The
Taliban representative to
former top State
reply: "I am astonished by
Department official in
President Bush when he
charge of Afghanistan, Karl
claims there is nothing in
Inderfurth, agrees that it is
the Koran that justifies jihad DANIEL PIPES
not "appropriate for non-
or violence in the name of
Muslims to presume to
Special
Islam. Is he some kind of
give instruction" about
Commentary
Islamic scholar? Has he ever
Islamic faith and the
actually read the Koran?"
Koran.
The Taliban do have a point, for it
is very strange for U.S. government
Watching What We Say
officials to proclaim what is or is not
true Islam. Who are they — neither
Bernard Lewis, the leading
Muslims nor scholars of Islam, but
American scholar of Islam, puts it
representatives of a secular govern-
less diplomatically: It is surely pre-
ment — to instruct Muslims about
sumptuous for those who are not
their religion? And, realistically, which
Muslims to say what is orthodox
Muslims accept spiritual guidance
and what is heretical in Islam."
from the White House?
This is good and sensible advice.
Interestingly, U.S. policy in prin-
Rather than initiate a quixotic and
ciple agrees that this hectoring is
unacceptable. "Don't presume to
PIPES on page 42

