The Holy Land in Transit: Colonialism and the Quest ... - Epistemology

Book Reviews 113
Apart from the conceptual aspects, the rest of the book’s twenty-four
chapters simply provide an account of who said what to whom among
American officials, the associated decision-making process, the evolution of
the war plan against Iraq, and details of daily battles. For anyone interested
in these aspects of the war, the book is a useful source and reference.
However, it suffers from a measure of superficiality, particularly where it
fails to link the entire episode to American global and strategic interests, intimating
that the United States went to Iraq simply to accomplish a certain
task and leave once it had been achieved. It also fails to discuss reports that
the United States may have used some kind of unconventional weapons in
the battle for Baghdad’s airport. Such errors of omission tend to affect the
book’s quality.
AmrG.E.Sabet
Department of Political Science
University of Helsinki, Finland
The Holy Land in Transit:
Colonialism and the Quest for Canaan
Steven Salaita
Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2006. 234 pages.
In The Holy Land in Transit: Colonialism and the Quest for Canaan,Steven
Salaita explores not just similar, but identical aspects of settler colonialism
in the New World and the Holy Land. Indeed, on both continents ethnocentric
colonial discourse forged the “noble savage” and “chosen people”
dichotomy. On this basis, the author compellingly argues that the United
States and Israel are not merely bound politically and strategically, but also
historically and philosophically: both have transformed theological narratives
into national histories. In this groundbreaking comparative analysis of the
Holy Land pathos (labeled “pernicious mythology” and “messianic extremism”)
across national boundaries, Salaita explicates the Manifest Destiny process
of “wresting Edenic land from savages in the name of prophesy and
progress” (p. 119).
Armed with Biblical narratives and garrison force, covenantal “chosen
people” set out to cultivate a bountiful “promised land” presumed to be
vacant in the New World and the Near East. Newcomers escaping persecution
on a quest for Canaan justified their occupation of foreign territory by
placing the subjugation of inferior indigenous “Canaanites” within a Biblical

114 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 25:2
framework and “constructed themselves as bearers of enlightenment to a
heretofore savage land” (p. 113). Not assailing Israeli and American denizens,
Salaita primarily interrogates “the notion that one people’s scriptural
prophecies override the rights of another people’s very existence” (p. 44).
With colonialism at the near-center of Palestinian and Native American
literatures, according to Salaita, encoded in their contemporary fiction is a
form of resistance to settler encroachment and chicanery often dubbed
“terrorism.” Bringing together authors that have never had personal or critical
contact – although often alluding to one another – he unites groups
with common histories and deconstructs the “theology of divine progress”
(p. 113) that has dehumanized indigenous peoples. An insightful analysis
of how politics influences literary production, The Holy Land in Transit
focuses on the works of four Palestinian and Anishinaabe (Ojibwe/
Chippewa) novelists who resist, challenge, and even ridicule colonialism:
Gerald Vizenor and Winona LaDuke of the White Earth Anishinaabe
Nation, Palestinian-Israeli Emile Habiby, and Palestinian-in-exile Liyana
Badr.
Not only are Palestinian-Zionist and Anishinaabe-American encounters
remarkably similar, but also both bodies of literature face parallel issues of
authenticity and questions as to what constitutes serving community and
nation. Likewise, Salaita is mindful of his own scholarship’s utility. As
Arabs and Natives remain little understood in the American consciousness,
he builds solidarity by informing Arab Americans of domestic indigenous
issues and Native Americans of related foreign affairs. As his anti-dogmatic
scholarship is ultimately concerned with redress, the author reaches out to
activists and non-specialist general readers as well.
After firmly establishing the critical and theoretical framework in the
first three chapters, chapter 4 probes colonial and indigenous interplay in
LaDuke’s Last Standing Woman. Chapter 5 juxtaposes Israel’s Kahan Commission
Report, produced after the Sabra and Shatila massacres, with Badr’s
A Balcony over the Fakihani, while chapter 6 compares the trickster narratives
of Vizenor and Habiby. Salaita concludes with a powerful personal
narrative, “Dreamcatchers on the Last Frontier,” in which he recounts his
summer sojourn in the Shatila refugee camp. There, he noted the myriad
ways in which Palestinian refugees express their common liberation struggle
with the dispossessed Hindi Ahmar (“Red Indians”) of the New World.
Living in “their own version of a reservation” (p. 179), Salaita underscores
how the Palestinians of Shatila venerate Native Americans, even to the extent
of appropriating Native symbols.

Book Reviews 115
Despite notable differences between Native and Palestinian cultures and
somewhat homogenizing indigenous histories to bolster his argument,
Salaita’s undertaking is an outstanding success. Furthermore, his work does
not exhaust the Native-Palestinian paradigm; rather, The Holy Land in Transit
marks the beginning of a potentially fruitful interdisciplinary conversation.
As the book is conceptualized as traditional literary criticism, historians may,
for example, desire a comparative archival study of colonial histories, legal
scholars an in-depth analysis of dispossession through legal systems, and religious
scholars a significant treatment of Biblical literature. Future contributions
will certainly rely upon the foundation that Salaita has set.
This exploratory model makes an important contribution to the burgeoning
field of global indigenous studies, as tribal societies in modern industrial
states throughout the world embark upon decolonial movements. This
book will be of interest to scholars of Middle Eastern studies, Native
American studies, literature, history, political science, sociology, and comparative
ethnic studies, among many other areas of inquiry. Bringing to
light diminished histories of settler societies and ethnic cleansing, Salaita’s
engaging comparative analysis of colonial rhetoric in The Holy Land in
Transit is an eye-opening new interpretation.
Doug Kiel
Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Islamic Democratic Discourse: Theory, Debates,
and Philosophical Perspectives
M. A. Muqtedar Khan, ed.
Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2006. 271 pages.
M. A. Muqtedar Khan’s (ed.) Islamic Democratic Discourse: Theory,
Debates, and Philosophical Perspectives examines how Muslim thinkers
have and are trying to formulate systems for good and ethical self-governance
and the necessity, therein, for political discourse. The debates in these
essays, which span a wide range of subjects and periods, are held together
by a common principle: political discourse has a long standing in the
Muslim world. Given that the Muslim world’s conventional image is one in
which autocratic regimes prevail, the significance of this argument, presented
here from its theological, legal, and regional perspectives, is of great
importance.