The Critical Traveler: Review of
Among the Believers, pt. 1

August 27, 2006

In Among the Believers V.S. Naipaul presents four Muslim countries: Iran, Pakistan, Malaysia, and Indonesia. The triumph of the book is Naipaul's ability to make these four countries stand out as unique places. This is not a book about Islam in the east.. but a book about Islam in four countries. Each country assumes its character by means of a series of reported conversations. These are not the "Hi, how are you? What's great about your country?" types of conversations, but more like "critical" conversations. As I read I started to think that the kinds of questions asked by Naipaul represent something of a philosophy of travel.. a philosophy which separates him from both the journalist and the academic. I thought I would inquire into his inquiries.

1. Defining "conversation"

...he said, with the same unconvincing roughness, 'Write out your questions.'

It was another piece of picked-up style, but it was hard for me. I had been hoping to get him to talk about his life; I would have liked to enter his mind, to see the world as he saw it. I had been hoping for conversation. I couldn't say what questions I wanted to put to him until he had begun to talk... [61-2]

Arriving in Iran soon after the revolution, one might think that a series of factual or religious questions would be asked.. but Naipaul was interested simply in talking, person to person, about life in general. The impossible ideal for this conversation was to "see the world as he saw it." That cannot be fully achieved, but in practice it will mean gauging reponses to all the details of life and noting personal motivations whenever possible.

When technical religious terms come up in conversation, Naipaul tries to discover how that religious language relates to actual life:

I asked how articles of faith as abstruse as prophethood and imamhood strengthened him in day-to-day matters. [197]

or

'Yes, but I know your philosophy, the ideas of your movement. I want something more personal.' [273]

Naipaul wants to know the person, not the person expressed through technical religious terms, but the person in the midst of daily human exigencies. Conversation is what happens when people interact as human beings, and not as "experts."

It may seem simple, but an important aspect of that conversation involves putting together a life story.. articulating a sense of self. It is exactly here that so many of Naipaul's attempted conversations go awry:

It wasn't easy. Not because he was secretive, but because he seemed to carry no connected idea of his life. Experiences floated loose in his mind, and it was necessary to ask many little questions. [172]

If conversation involves two people interacting as human beings, then it follows that each must understand their own life as an individual.. without that conversation can only be disjointed talk. It is the sense of self which allows for a person to relate facts and hopes into some coherence..

2. Other people's journeys

Naipaul often asks people about their experiences abroad: What did you think of your time in London? or America? The following is a response he received from a Muslim in Malaysia concerning a trip to America:

'The food was all western food. Being a Muslim, it was difficult for me to enjoy the food because I had a suspicion that the food is not cooked in the Muslim way. On the second night my programme director brought me to see an X-rated film. And I felt that most of the experience I am going to face in America is not my'—he searched for the word— 'culture, is something foreign to me...

'When I stopped in Bangkok, Hong Kong, Tokyo, I see the same thing—tall buildings, busy people, modern technology. The thing I could not find is the person with the same religious background as I am.'

'Why were you so surprised? You had gone to a foreign country. A big country, an important country. Weren't you interested in what they had to show?' [298-9]

In another case he speaks with a Malaysian Muslim who has visited London and recalls three things: the people traveling underground, a speaker in Hyde Park saying that 60% of English men were homosexual, and the sight of couples embracing in public (324).

In both of these cases there is an implied criticism: this is how not to travel. These men visited a foreign city but instead of being able to fully experience a new place, they were cast back upon themselves. For Naipaul this inability to travel is directly linked to the fundamentalist version of Islam. It is a religion of external rules, governing even the manner in which a person coughs (320). Faced with the modern world, the fundamentalist must take a purely defensive posture, protected from wrong foods, wrong sexualities, and wrong dress codes.

Naipaul is incredulous: "Weren't you interested in what they had to show?" A little later Naipaul directly comments:

But I think that because you traveled to America with a fixed idea you might have missed some things. [303]

In those criticisms is a positive philosophy of travel: a person must be open to new experience. Travel is not to be undertaken in a defensive crouch, trying to justify one's own ways to oneself, but in a spirit of receptiveness. And the "fixed idea" must be finally banished. A place must be allowed to define itself, and the visitor's mind must be agile enough to update its past ideas.

Naipaul's book Among the Believers works as an exemplary case as to how a traveler can let impressions and conversations mold a view of a place. He introduces ideas, but they are conspicuously tested by experience. The interpretation of a place arises from the details of conversations.. which are then organized into larger patterns.

3. Critical angles

Naipaul recognizes that he is no academic. To get some of his historical facts, he clearly had recourse to academic books, but these facts are only a sideline. There is a brief description of an academic. The story waltzes into the book at the end of a chapter, and involves an Australian who is researching charcoal-burners:

But the Australian I had then met had already spent two months researching into that very matter.Two months! He laughed at my exclamation. Two months were nothing. A scholarly paper required interviews, questionaires, tables. The academic life might appear leisurely, but it had its severities. [412]

This passage helps to draw out the distinction between Naipaul's work and "academic" work. The Australian's research is characterized by: 1) a narrow topic, 2) methodology, and 3) a lengthy period devoted to study. None of these are true for Naipaul's work. He appears to breeze in and out of countries in a relatively short time; he aims at personal conversations that are jotted down on spare pieces of paper; and he takes the widest possible topic, Islam in four large countries. In fact, it is hard to imagine an academic at an American university writing this book.. it is impossibly broad.

Neither is the book a journalistic take on Islam in these countries. Such books aim for a "current events" type of audience, trying to give readers a summary of what they need to know about a certain part of the world.. explaining why gas prices may be going up, etc. Although the book is getting on 25 years old, and is certainly dated in terms of the politics of the countries involved, it remains an important book because of its ability to convey a snapshot of individual Muslims. Naipaul adopts a critical point of view for this form of personal reportage. Time after time the fundamentalist versions of history and lifestyle are critiqued.. not simply reported.

So it remains to define just what this critical spirit might be.. It is not the acceptance of an impassive academic, nor is it the passionate rebuke of a partisan trying to justify his or her own side, nor is it the pragmatic descriptive prose of a journalist.. it is instead the measured judgment by an individual of other individuals and their interaction with the world. It does not carry the overt authority of a study loaded with charts and diagrams.. It is also not as if many important leaders talked with Naipaul, lending the book authority by the force of their names. The only authority possible for Naipaul are conversations and minor incidents recorded with such vividness and clarity that they can hardly be gainsaid. It is a humanly critical approach.. which is not a point of view to be adopted solely when writing a book, but whenever traveling through a new country.