Book Review: Europe: The Marx Dictionary
Date | 01 May 2013 |
DOI | 10.1111/1478-9302.12016_11 |
Author | Paul Blackledge |
Published date | 01 May 2013 |
Subject Matter | Book Review |
233
to reports of how especially militant jihadist groups,
The Marx Dictionary by Ian Fraser and Law-
such as al-Qa’eda and the Taliban, rely on dreams for
rence Wilde. London: Continuum, 2011. 223pp.,
inspiration or propaganda in their political struggle. To
£18.99, ISBN 978 1 4411 7832 9
this end, the book tries to trace the genetic codes of
Ian Fraser and Lawrence Wilde’s The Marx Dictionary is
the contemporary suicide bombers through an evalua-
the third volume with a similar title on my shelves.
tion of ‘true’ dreams in Islamic prophecy, looking at the
Why should anyone buy this one? Two reasons imme-
Sufi notion and the tradition of dream interpretation
diately spring to mind: it offers something different and
dictionaries.
delivers on its promise of providing an excellent intro-
The fundamental argument of the book is that a
duction to many of the key concepts used by Marx. On
considerable number of Muslims seek guidance via
the one hand it covers a much wider selection of
dreams and especially the practice of istikhara, that is,
concepts than are to be found in Terrell Carver’s A
Islamic dream incubation, as a last resort after exhaust-
Marx Dictionary.1 Both books open with a brief survey
ing other crisis management techniques when they face
of Marx’s life, but then Carver focuses on just sixteen
a major life decision. Central to this argument is the
key concepts, each of which attracts a fairly substantial
claim that jihadist dream narratives serve as authorising
essay.
agents for dreamers and are used as a political strategy
Fraser and Wilde, by contrast, cover about ten times
to promote their dreams as ‘revelations from beyond
as many concepts in a not substantially longer book.
this world’ (p. 121). As a case in point, Edgar discusses
While gains in breadth are made...
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