How to Fight Islamist Terror from the Missionary Position by Tabish Khair

How to Fight Islamist Terror from the Missionary Position Reviews

• 
  Janine

  If you're going to begin a book by telling the reader that it is "a full account of the events that have exercised considerable media attention in Denmark in recent months and that involved me," and then refer repeatedly to said event in ominous tones, by the time the reader gets to these events, they had better be worth it. This is particularly true when the events don't even take centre stage occur until almost the 90% mark. Unfortunately this book didn't live up to its own hype and I found the denouement to be very disappointing.
  
  The narrator appears to be in love with his friend Ravi and his incessant fawning becomes incredibly irritating after a while. He spends more time contemplating Ravis' thoughts, ideas, feelings and love life than he does his own.
  
  Ravi as a character is unbelievable and I suspect is the author's idealised self. He is described as a tall, elegant millionaire with a "handsome Bollywood face," who "had grown up among Bollywood starlets," he "could have easily got a role as a star in an Bollywood film on the basis of his looks alone." On top of this he is the recipient of a university gold medal in history, has a "consciously camouflaged ability to read and absorb faster that anyone else I have known," and "a literary reputation in India and the UK....For more than a decade he had been rumoured to be the next Vikram Seth." Unlike the narrator his Danish is "beautifully intoned," he is a much better cook, knows more about Danish art and wine, and to top it off he has "perfect pitch." (which causes Ravi to lose interest in pursuing music, because perfection is just so boring, yaar).
  
  When Ravi falls in love with the equally perfect Lena ("the broader beauty of Ravi's Bollywood looks somehow matching the narrow perfection of Lena's Nordic features" they were both "people who were born naturally elegant and had honed their elegance to perfection")their relationship becomes the major focus of the narrator despite the fact that he's also just started dating a woman known only as Mrs Linen Marx. We find out almost nothing about Mrs Linen Marx apart from the fact that she's shallow and a bit stupid, or Lena for that matter whose biggest fault is that she's too poised. I found Ravi and the narrator's discussions and attitudes towards women to be quite juvenile and sit-com like. None of the characters were very real but the women fared worst (not that surprising considering the book begins with an anecdote about "the only girl I ever fucked who had an MFA in writing").
  
  The plot just meanders along, punctuated by dark hints about Karim's strange activities and the "events" and a pointless sub plot about a gay upstairs neighbour. The author then wraps it all up very quickly and everything is explained. There were a few interesting conversations in this book and I liked the glimpses into Danish life it offers, but it doesn't have the sharp political observations and humour I was expecting. The insights into terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism weren't exactly earth-shattering, and overall it was a disappointing read.
• 
  Q

  I really enjoyed this. Funny, clever and very tender beneath the over-educated ironic bombast. Po-co English Lit does sharehouse bro novel is a strangely satisfying genre it seems.
  
  I feel obliged to note that the female characters exist mainly as plot points for the men, which is a bit of an issue in any case but more so in a novel that treats its male characters to such humanity. But it fits with with the first person unreliable narrator.
  
  I really liked that 'cultural difference' is sort of the novel's central conflict but it's the individual cultural difference between three South Asian men living in Denmark. Of course there's discussion of whiteness but it's not the focus. Even religion, class, nationality and age are present but not defining. Really the three central characters are defined and differentiated by what they mean by love and I appreciate the unabashed sappiness of that.
• 
  Kamal Latif

  I loved this book.
  
  I found it to be brilliantly profound, though provoking, subtle and clever in a highly accessible and enjoyable way.
  
  It has a great cast of characters and It gets into your head without you realising it. You think you know it all , but this story makes you think again. It challenges your preconceptions but in a really fun and down to earth way I found thoroughly engaging.
  
  I Highly recommend this book. It didn't take me long to read but left me with a greta deal to ponder and think about, and it was a fun journey too.
  
  
  
• 
  Abhijeet Dangat

  Suppose Chetan Bhagat had studied literature instead of engineering and business administration and was commissioned to write a book about terrorism and Islamophobia in Europe with the main characters from the Indian subcontinent; I think this would be the result.
  
  Good bits - It is genuinely funny in parts, and the end is thought-provoking.
• 
  Rxchel

  Tabish Khair has written a marvelously entertaining novel full of tittering sexual references and darkly subtle, but equally quirky religious and socio-political themes. If one is expecting a certain amount of satire, you won’t be disappointed. But more often than not, Khair tries to disarm serious subjects not only through satire but also through a light, entertaining tone, laced with his witty language. The title refers to two sub-plots that drive a much broader story and theme of which the audience fully discovers near the end of the novel.
  
  ​Immediately we are given into the manipulation of the narrator’s storytelling technique. We are simply puppets to his narrative, but not necessarily in a negative way. The narrator seduces and lures us into the three men’s’ lives, slowly unraveling his and Ravi’s love affairs. However, even though both the narrator and Ravi delve into the dating game, the narrator seems to be more intrigued with Ravi’s love life than his own. Thus develops an entirely detailed narrative that tracks Ravi’s various search to meet the “perfect” woman, through midnight escapades to bars and so on. But what does this point towards?
  ​One begins to form questions about the narrator’s focus on his friend, in somewhat excruciating detail at times; there are moments when we feel like we know Ravi better than the narrator himself. In fact, he spends more time thinking about Ravi’s thoughts, emotions, and love life than his own. What is the nature of love that is so important to these men, and specifically what kind of purpose does it serve in the overall theme of the novel? Every subplot seems to direct itself towards the bigger plot, the “mysterious event with Karim”, but without knowing what the event is, how should we engage with these subplots in the meantime?
  
  Prejudice, ignorance, and preconceptions about individuals and cultures are the primary causes of socio-political divisions amongst societies. Under these circumstances, I would definitely recommend this novel to readers who are interested in issues of cosmopolitanism. At the very heart of cosmopolitanism is the problem of generalizing individuals through “othering”, whether it is in a positive way or a negative way. To engage with cosmopolitanism correctly, one must have a blank slate mind set – a sense of openness to various cultures and citizens, and a constant effort to embrace one’s own culture as much as other’s. There must be a sense of mutual respect on each party despite different beliefs. One must value and embrace the differences but that does not mean one must debunk one’s own identity. And Khair successfully engages with these kinds of ideas through the story and his fascinating characters.
• 
  Moushumi Ghosh

  What a witty and ironic little book! I couldn't put this book down until I had finished it. Reading this book has been a total "glass full" experience.
• 
  Annie Zaidi

  This is a delightful novel. It is irreverent and self-aware and manages to be a political, literary, romantic page-turner. While many books can be fast-paced and political or irreverent and literary, it is rare to find these elements compressed into one short novel.
  
  The story moves fast, and yet, it is not driven by adventure or intrigue. It is a novel about friendship and ideas, finally, and is full of memorable passages such as these:
  
  " ‘Fascism,’ he would declaim over a few drinks, ‘is above all the ideology of order.’ ‘Exclusive order, you mean?’ I had once queried. ‘There is no such thing, bastard,’ he had replied. ‘You either have order or you have shades of disorder. All order is essentially exclusive; it does not have degrees, like disorder. You can have order only by eliminating. Elimination is its essence. All order has genocide hidden in its belly. Give it nine months and it will give birth, under clement conditions of course, to a holocaust.’ "
  
  "I am grateful for all this and a hundred other small things. But I am also grateful for the knowledge that she can go on without me and I can continue without her; that, in due course, if required, we might both find our glasses more or less half-full with love for someone else."
  
  " ‘She is one of those people who gets frozen into poise. They become a mirror of themselves, echoes. That is why all she can do is echo me: if I want to live with her, that is what she wants too; if I want to separate, she is willing to accept that too for our sake. She can never do something that is frayed, awry, unexpected. And the pity, bastard, is that she has it in herself – have you looked into those green eyes? I have never seen eyes that colour. There is a forest, a lush wilderness trapped in her eyes forever, petrified. She is a prisoner of herself.’
  
  It is prescient but also insightful viz the role played by race and 'otherness' in piquing romantic interest, and the place of South Asian immigrants in Europe, both those of the working class and those who qualify as intellectuals especially in the post 9/11 world. South Asian writers based in (or semi-based in) Europe, the UK or north America, have written novels that touch on similar themes, possibly emerging from similar triggers, but I found this one refreshing for its lightness of touch and its emphasis on the protagonists' desire to reach for joy and fulfillment.
  
  
• 
  Lynne

  I liked this short novel more and more as it went on. Initially I was a bit put off by its laddishness. But I grew to care for all the characters, was gripped by the plot and enjoyed the comedy and poignancy. A real tale for our times
• 
  Marvin

  The narrator, a thoroughly secularized Pakistani Muslim who teaches English literature at a university in Denmark, and his friend Ravi, a Hindu from India pursuing a PhD in history, take rooms in the flat of a fundamentalist Muslim. Frequent foreshadowing lets us know that they will eventually become caught up in a terrorist incident, though that incident, when it finally comes very near the end of the novel, [spoiler alert] doesn't really amount to much. And that, I guess, is partly the point. Our narrator, a Muslim himself who is, however secularized, still susceptible to bias & suspicions related to terrorism, himself finds his landlord's innocent activities suspicious. This seems like a very promising premise for a novel, but it's not really the focus of much of the narration, which is not very well written nor, alas, very interesting.
• 
  Sudha Bellamkonda

  Tabish Khair is quickly turning into one of my must-read everything by authors. With this and "the thing about thugs", he has to me proven to have a unique voice in creating characters from the sub-continent. Delightful, ironic and twisted little story.
• 
  Kasturi Dadhe

  Terrorism, prejudice, broken relationships and a slow paced book. Felt like drinking mojito without enough mint. Wanted more out of the book, especially because it had the potential. Very un-missionaresque!
• 
  RB

  How could I not buy this book when it has a blurb like that? lol sounds like a fun read - looking forward to it. :)
• 
  Rima Ghanem

  a nice novel, eventhough its titel is somehow misleading, but i enjoyed reading it. During reading, I had the feeling that i know the characters and I like them.
• 
  Theresa

  This is quite an interesting book for sure.
  It had some very clever insights into relationships and human failures and some specific lines I really did enjoy, e.g.:
  

  "Perfection condems you to glorious mediocrity. It is in the gap between your imperfections, honestly faced, and your desire for something beyond perfection that you can achieve genius. Perfect pitch, perfect life, perfect love - these are dead-ends."

  
  Yet overall this book seemed like a little bit too in your face with its cleverness. The metaphors and allegories in this are literally beaten to death by how frequently they are being used - if I have to hear about the aunties inside Ravi or the glass being half full ONE MORE TIME...
  Then there was this "ominous terrorist incident" we keep hearing about in the book. The amount of foreshadowing is ridiculous considering how actually anti-climactic the event then turns out to be. It doesn't even occur until maybe 20 pages off the end and then gets dealt with in a few meagre paragraphs. Why even go there then?
  Overall just kind of an okay-book where the title was more intriguing than the actual story.
• 
  Marvin

  The narrator, a thoroughly secularized Pakistani Muslim who teaches English literature at a university in Denmark, and his friend Ravi, a Hindu from India pursuing a PhD in history, take rooms in the flat of a fundamentalist Muslim. Frequent foreshadowing lets us know that they will eventually become caught up in a terrorist incident, though that incident, when it finally comes very near the end of the novel, [spoiler alert] doesn't really amount to much. And that, I guess, is partly the point. Our narrator, a Muslim himself who is, however secularized, still susceptible to bias & suspicions related to terrorism, himself finds his landlord's innocent activities suspicious. This seems like a very promising premise for a novel, but it's not really the focus of much of the narration, which is not very well written nor, alas, very interesting.
• 
  Matt Thackeray

  The quotes on the back don't really do this book justice. It's certainly not an immigrant story nor a thriller. Quite simply it's a story of man but what differs is this man is not the usual white male protagonist with the story being told by a man from Pakistan. It's a wry read leading up to the same kind of denouement as "A Prayer for Owen Meany" with all the little dominoes lined up without the reader noticing.
  
  Overall, I'd say it's a cleverer read than it first appears and doesn't challenge your assumptions but certainly makes you think about them (assuming you're woke that is)
• 
  Tanis

  The best book I've read this year.
  
  It was so much better than I thought it would be, the characters were really engaging and I had to ration my reading so I didn't zip through it too fast. Loved it.
• 
  Charlotte Burt

  Review to follow soon
• 
  Louise Paech

  3.5🥃 I may have to read this again! Loved the ending - sad and thought provoking.
• 
  N

  I had such high expectations from this book but the story, writing and the characters were just a mess.
• 
  Sohail Nijas

  A delightful little novel, that appealed to me for the crafty yet easy way it is written and perspectives from an atheist born into a Muslim family that struck a chord.
• 
  Neelam

  “There is obviously a very thin line dividing faithfulness from fanaticism- and I wonder if, in a world full of easily exchangable commodities, we can even see that line anymore.”
• 
  Andy Quan

  A book review is never objective but when I know the person who has written it, it becomes less so. Not that I would be untruthful, exaggerate or overpraise on account of a friendship. It’s just impossible to separate the experience of reading from the friendship or the knowledge of the writer.
  
  This felt particularly true while reading Tabish Khair’s fabulously titled How to fight Islamist terror from the missionary position. Tabish and I met at a Danish folk high school, me on a year abroad from university, and Tabish, as a journalist and writer… my memory fails me of how he also ended up in that small quirky international gathering of young people, Danes who wanted to practice their English and the stranger group, a ragtag assortment of foreigners all with some tie to or interest in Denmark or Scandinavia.
  
  We bonded over writing, and I remember his gentle wit and intelligence and some shared bottles of red wine. Tabish fell in love and ended up staying in Denmark. I saw him a number of years after the college, and then a long break until seeing him in October of last year. It was great to reconnect, which lead to him sending me the American version of this novel. But the visit was also somewhat unsatisfying. How do you catch up over so many years, share the twists and turns of one’s life? There wasn’t enough time.
  
  Reading this novel gave me what I’d missed. His story is of three South Asian men living in Arhus in Denmark: the narrator, a measured and thoughtful English literature professor of Pakistani origin, his good friend Ravi, with movie star looks and wealth, and their housemate Karim, also Indian, a devout Muslim and taxi driver.
  
  Their interactions and stories tell me about South Asian men living in Denmark, about Danish society, about dating, and about understandings or misunderstandings across cultures, language and religion, wrapped expertly with marvellous storytelling and playful commentary on gender roles, politics and society.
  
  I often read books to enter into new worlds, and the university setting of a not universally known Danish city with characters I was unfamiliar with, engaged me. Rather than the common trope of an immigrant family in the West, the men in this story are simply living their adult lives, in a culture they were not born to.
  
  Depicting three characters extremely different from each other in culture, philosophy and belief, but who could all be stereotyped with the same brushstroke in certain circumstances, is not done heavy-handedly but makes its point. The narrative effortlessly switches between themes: a jab at ‘Eng List types’, defining tolerance, the negotiations of dating a single mother, questions of Islam, many observations of Danish culture, and the ebbs and flows of both romances and friendships.
  
  It told me a unique story of what my old friend Tabish has been thinking and observing over years living in Denmark and teaching at the university, with parts that felt like an in-joke for friends such as the characters’ visit to Elsinore, the location of our college, or the chapter called ‘Great Claus and Little Claus’ which is how we differentiated between the two Clauses at our college.
  
  Reading back these paragraphs above, they don’t seem to capture how much I enjoyed the book. It really is funny and engaging but also matched with a depth and breadth of thought.
  
  I’m curious how it will be received by others. I’d love it to be a blockbuster! But I’d guess that the setting is neither familiar enough nor exotic enough for some readers, and the big event of the book, hinted at compellingly through the novel, is not as explosive as I thought it might be. There’s a subtlety to the storytelling that may not be appreciated by readers looking for bigger bangs and cheaper thrills. Still, it’s been now published in the USA and the UK with rumours of a film version. I recommend reading the book not only to get ahead of the curve, but for the enjoyment of a wonderful novel.
  
  Now, I think this is an appropriate time to sign off and websurf to find out what other readers think of the book. It’s a pleasure to sometimes come to a book completely fresh and then explore what chatter is out there. Excuse me.
  
  [Postscript: very pleased to read rave reviews of the book in the Huffington Post, Slate, the New Republic and reader reviews here!]
• 
  Roger Brunyate

  A Deceptive Book With a Marvelous Title
  
  The marvelously quirky title is actually a pretty good indicator of what to expect from this almost-marvelous quirky book. Though if you expect satire or some kind of romp, that's not what you'll get—rather, serious subjects treated in a disarmingly urbane way. As the title implies, there are two main threads: Islam and the romantic lives of the various characters. Both are treated in oblique, unexpected ways; my only serious problem with the novel is that I don't quite see how the two connect. But behind all of this is what I imagine is a pretty realistic picture of the lives of educated South Asian expatriates in a Northern European country.
  
  The unnamed Pakistani narrator, with a newly-minted PhD in English literature, has a junior faculty position at the University of Århus in Denmark. With his best friend Ravi, an Indian doctoral student in history (and fiction writer), he takes a room in the apartment of an older Pakistani named Karim, also with a graduate degree but working as a taxi driver. Karim is an Islamic fundamentalist; the narrator is Muslim, but lapsed to the point of atheism; Ravi, although raised as a Hindu, seeks to learn more about Islam, and occasionally joins Karim's Friday night groups to study the Quran. At other times, the two younger men lead typical bachelor lives of drinking and serial dating, until first Ravi and then the narrator fall in love.
  
  The narrator is very present, not only as a character in his own story, but as a conscious manipulator of the narrative, which is studded with throwaway literary references and quotations: the chapters have titles like "Lilacs out of the dead land" and "The sun also rises." Being a former EngLit student myself, I found this rather endearing, and I enjoyed his voice. One of his tricks is to throw in phrases like "As I was to explain to the police later..." or "If I had known then what I know now...". He does this with both strands of the plot: the apparent buildup to some act of terrorism, and the course of Ravi's love affair.
  
  But it is a deliberately deceptive technique; Khair's interest seems less in what happens than in what does not. The two obvious themes turn out to be less important than a third, lurking quietly in the back seat. This is neither religious nor romantic but social: the place of the relatively privileged members of other races in an all-white country, and the stifling effect of life in the apparently well-adjusted democracy of Denmark. At one point in the book, Ravi publishes a story entitled "A State of Niceness," which might well stand for the entire country; it is a good story, and it explains a lot. I caught echoes here of both
  The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid and
  In the Light of What We Know by Zia Haider Rahman, both also Pakistani authors. But this is a quieter book, chamber music to their symphonies. I would love to give it five stars, but I feel that the themes do not quite come together. So a very high four.
• 
  Elli

  I am somewhat torn by how to review this book. But maybe that's part of why I did like it.
  Essentially, it opens up for consideration an array of issues surrounding wealth, privilege, preconceptions, belief systems, and relationships. I could be annoyed that they weren't all addressed in full, but then I think that any author who did attempt to answer these in full would fall short.
  
  So let's start with the characters, who I knew early on I would hate - if they were white. A lot of the dialogue is very public school banter type crap that I try not associate with in my own life. It smacks so much of unfair privilege and wealth. Unfortunately, the protagonist's descriptions of Ravi perfectly match everything I've been brought up to believe that one should aspire to - an encyclopedic knowledge of all sorts of authors, being full of wit and academic banter, being well traveled and fitting in easily wherever he goes, and being disgustingly rich - which makes me question my own values on this and to me, makes the characters a useful tool of analysis of the issues I think the author is attempting to explore.
  
  Moving from privilege we move nicely on to immigrants. The three main immigrants in this story vary incredibly differently in class and education. A devout Muslim taxi driver, and two academics (one unimaginably rich, the other privileged but seemingly still bound by reality) who indulge with Islam only to criticise or romanticise it. I enjoy reading about their experiences in Denmark, coming to accept the Dane's interesting quirks, and learning about their customs. And how different their experiences are. A central theme is, as per the title, Islamist fundamentalism, and this is experienced in some way through each of these immigrants, even if that is just to question their own judgements about a religion they don't believe in but find themselves connected to through their skin colour.
  
  And finally, love. Or at least, sex. The two main characters have very different approaches to love and relationships but we end up following their bachelor lifestyles and unrequited love. Meanwhile we follow alongside the breakdown of a neighbour's marriage and the discovery of a new relationship. I've read some reviews of this book which say that these are pointless asides but I find that they give us further insight into our main characters, in terms of their reactions to how everything unfolds. Even the otherwise perfect Ravi is slave to his 'aunties' and has to find out and be involved in gossip, but ends up understanding a bit more than we might have given him credit for. Yet again, I find the unanswered questions interesting and helpful more than frustrating - an insightful portrayal of the battlefield of finding love when everyone is so incredibly different, with such wildly varied expectations.
  
  All in all, I found it an entertaining read. The foreshadowing was a little bit overdone but I could forgive it for some otherwise excellent insights, stylistic gems, and thought provoking content.