The book is an open letter to fellow
Muslims, unabashed on every page.
She takes on the treatment of women
in Islam and human rights violations
in countries ruled by Islamic regimes,
among other issues, and urges a non-
literal reading of the Koran, recogniz-
ing that the text can be ambiguous.
She calls for a return to ijtihad, the
Islamic tradition of independent rea-
soning, which animated Islam's golden
age, between about 750 and 1250.
Concepts like dissent, debate, interpre-
tation, revision and reform, which are
missing in much of mainstream Islam,
are all integral to- itjihad.
. Her book is also deeply personal,
and she recounts her early experience
in a madressa; or Islamic religious
school: Because she asked too many
question's, namely about anti-Semitism
and the role of women, she was
expelled at age 14. But she didn't leave
Islam. She sought to educate herself
about her faith and found nothing that
sanctions bashing Jews. Eventually she
gave up ritualized prayer, with its
washings and bowings, and now
engages in a "spontaneous conversation
with my creator," she says.
Now available in English and
German, the book is being translated
into French, Greek, Italian and other
languages, and she is planning an
Arabic edition as well as versions in
other languages of the Muslim world.
This is not at all an academic book; it's
accessible to all, sometimes even funny.
The author, who moved to
Vancouver in 1972 when her family
was expelled from Idi Amin's Uganda,
says that she has been gratified by the
support she has been receiving from
Muslims around the world, particularly
women and young people — most of
whom can't speak publicly out of fear.
Manji has visited Israel twice and
expresses positive feelings toward the
State. She loved the "ferocious freedom
of expression" she encountered. "I
think for all its faults, Israel deserves a
lot of credit for being as humane a
society as a violence-strewn Middle
Eastern country can be."
She adds, "We Muslims have a lot to
learn about what not to do, and about
what we can do."

V

iolin soloist of chOice for
America's film composers,
Louis Kaufman gave pathos to
the scores of Gone With The Wind,

America's best-known anonymous
musician may finally be coming into
his own.

IA L
rma
— Diana:
te
• "b'''
e

Casablanca, The Diary of Anne Frank

and hundreds of other movies, from
the 1930s through the 1950s.
Although his performances pene-
trated the public's consciousness to an
astounding degree (it would be diffi-
cult to fincl , a dedicated movie-goer
who cannot hum the theme to Gone
with the Wind),. Kaufman himself '
never gained much fame. The publica-,
tion of his chatty and even-tempered
autobiography A Fiddler's Tale should
help, elevate him to his rightful place.
Kaufman, who died in 1994 at the
age of 89, was the eldest son of
Romanian Jewish immigrants who
settled in Portland, Oregon. Even
before his bar mitzvah, the young
man traveled from town to town play-
ing violin with a vaudeville troupe.
The fact that he had never learned to
„read music was no apparent
drance.
Despite this decidedly unprofession-
al beginning, Kaufman's talent was
apparent to master teacher Fritz
Kneisl at New York's Institute of
Musica:LArt. Becoming proficient on
both violin' and viola (and learning to
read music alon0he.,w4y), he won, '-
the first Naumberg Award in 1927.
Kaufman's career brought him in
contact with violinists Jascha Heifitz
and Mischa Elman and cellists Pablo
Casals and Gregor Piatigorsky. Flutist
Meredith Wilson, who wrote and
composed the hit show Music Man,
was a close friend; and Kaufman
became an early collector of the works
of another friend, American realist
painter Milton Avery.
All these figure in Kaufman's auto-
biography, which is full of anecdotes
but devoid of the gossip that frequent-
ly permeates performers' memoirs.
In addition to his movie work,
Kaufman was a champion of then-
neglected Baroque composer Antonio
Vivaldi and recorded violin pieces by
20th-century composers such as
William Grant Still, Aaron Copland
and Ernest Bloch, at a time when the
American public's taste was still firmly
— Sandee Brawarsky grounded in the Romantics.
A Fiddler's Lift was co-written and
completed after Kaufman's death by
A FIDDLER'S
his wife, Annette. Since its publica-
tion earlier this year, the violinist's
TALE
accomplishments
have been touted in
By Louis Kaufman
a
highly
complimentary
article in
(University of
Commentary
magazine
(April
2004)
Wisconsin Press; 394
and
on
National
Public
Radio's
pp.; $26.95)

Morning Edition.

GOD AGAINST
THE GODS:
THE HISTORY
OF THE WAR
BETWEEN
MONOTHEISM
AND POLYTHEISM

.wik.S7 .14

By Jonathan Kirsch
(Viking; 336 pp.; $25.95)

J

onathan Kirsch is one of the pio-
neers of a new genre that might be
Called literary religion. In his
provocative books, he brings together
the disciplines of history, comparative .
religion and literature, along with origi-
nal interpretation. It's an approach he
shares with writers like Jack Miles, Karen
Armstrorig, Bernard Lewis and James
Carroll..'
Kirsch's latest book, God Against the
Gods, looks at the historical origins of
religious intolerance and the roots of
religious violence in the modern world.
He traces the first stirrings of monothe-
ism in ancient Egypt, the losing battles
that early Judaism and Christianity
fought against polytheism, and focuses
on the climax of the war between the
worship of many gods and one God,
when the world turned from polytheism
to monotheism in the 4th century.
Kirsch is an attorney specializing in
publishing law, a book reviewer for the
Los Angeles Times, where he has been
contributing reviews since 1968, and a
prolific author. His best-selling books
include The Harlot by the Side of the

Road: Forbidden Tales of the Bible, King
David: The Real Life of the Man Who
Ruled Israel, Moses: A Life, and The
Woman Who Laughed at God.
"I am fascinated by and passionate
about the many ways that men and
women here on Earth have imagined the
existence and workings of a divine
power," Kirsch says.
He says that all of his books start with
the same questions of where the Bible
came from, who wrote it and what they
were trying to achieve. "Once you
embrace the idea that everything we
think we know about God begins with
words uttered or written by human
beings like ourselves, it cannot fail to
change your ideas about God."
Kirsch is a fine writer and God Against
the Gods is a compelling book. Set in

antiquity, it sheds light on contempo-
rary times. In a position that might
initially startle some readers, he shows
the dark side of monotheism and the
bright side of paganism. It was
monotheism that brought on holy
wars, crusades, martyrdom and inqui-
sitions, while the central value of clas-
sical paganism was the same kind of
religious diversity and tolerance that is
claimed as the core of Western civiliza-
tion today.
An idea he labels a misconception and
tries to correct is the notion that pagan-
ism was essentially crude and demonic,
steeped in sin. He points out that many
of the achievements of civilization that
are thought to be classical, like art and
architecture, literature and philosophy,
are rooted in the world of "classical
paganism."
He feels that the new book is particu-
larly relevant these days, in light of all
the terrorism carried out in the name of
religion. "The horrors that we read
about in the headlines — religious vio-
lence in the name of the One True God
— are not unique to militant Islam.
Rather, they are expressions of an idea
that is written deeply into the very idea
of monotheism."

— Sandee Brawarsky

LONELY
PLANETS:
THE NATURAL
PHILOSOPHY
OF ALIEN LIFE

By David Grinspoon
(Ecco; 440 pp.; $25.95)

W

hen I was a boy in the late
1960s and '70s, it was easy to
imagine that space was a place
full of adventure, with strange extrater-
restrials living on faraway_plan.ets and
traveling in great ships. My brothers and
I, after all, saw astronauts land on the
moon. We watched Lost in Space and

Star Trek; Close Encounters of the Third
Kind and E.T.
David Grinspoon, just a few years
older, is part of that same generation for
whom traveling in space became a reali-
ty, and the possibility of life beyond
Earth a real scientific question, not
merely the subject of some Flash
Gordon serial.
His new book, Lonely Planets, tells of
this very human obsession with the stars,

READING BUG on page 34

6/25

2004

33