Reviews for Walter's Tours In The East

The average rating for Walter's Tours In The East based on 2 reviews is 2 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2010-01-12 00:00:00 Chris Yablonsky I have to admit, I was totally intrigued by this book b/c of its title. Too bad it wasn't actually about hip hop in the Muslim world. I'm not really sure what this book was about, but it was certainly an interesting read. It was too scattered though. It is basically a British Muslim's journey into the Arab world and Iran. He writes about his observations based on interacting with the people there. In this way, this is definitely not a scholarly treatise, but moreso a memoir. There are many times he makes gross oversimplifications. For example, he will have a conversation with a cab driver in Amman who is not a fan of political Islam and then say, "actually, Muslims want a separation between the state and religion. While I was talking to the cab driver in Amman I realized that political Islam has failed..." and then go on to another interaction with a waiter in a Lebanese restaurant. There are two amazing chapters in this book that I think everyone should read. The first is "The Shame of Midnight's Children" where he gives an amazing analysis of the whole Salman Rushdie Affair. The second is Finding Hermes Footprint: A Critique of Pure Dogma" where he talks about the struggle between Islamic "reformists" and "reaffirmationts" and the role of the Western intellectual tradition in that struggle.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-09-30 00:00:00 Laura Garay So this British Muslim guy goes on a holiday - and writes a book. The chapter titles and subheadings are o so groovy, but the text .. I read this book for the bits on Iran. If this is what you, too, are interested in, you can save yourself the trouble and get an idea of the tone and background research of the author-traveller by simply reading this quote: "I must have looked the very embodiment of sophistication as I walked around the [Persepolis] ruins, sucking on the straw to my mango juice, wondering if this wouldn't be a wonderful site to film an Indiana Jones movie". Some of the ponderings on Islam-abroad (surely he's the one from abroad as far as Islam goes?) are interesting. But since the content about stuff-I-know-about was so uninformed, it's difficult to really know how much value to place on it. For me, this book felt a little too like a seriously updated version of the colonial British travel memoirs: viewing the natives and their (often unpleasant, sometimes charming) habits from the outside; with more or less lengthy digressions on the authors pet topics (in this case, Islam)