BAAL, CHRIST, AND MOHAMMED: RELIGION AND REVOLUTION IN NORTH AFRICA.

By John K. Cooley'49. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1965. 369 pp. $8.95.

An amusement available to any book reviewer is reading the book-jacket capsule commentaries which anonymous publishing house propagandists produce to embellish their company's products and comparing what is promised by the publicist with what is written by the author. In the case of John K. Cooley's book its unknown eulogist entices the would-be purchaser with the vision of a "thoroughgoing yet non-technical introduction" to North Africa that will treat such diverse matters as Hannibal, Baal, St. Augustine, Arab horsemen, and Marxism. Predictably, the magic name of that most successful of all salesmen of publications dealing with the Arab Middle East, Nasser, is invoked by the blurb-writer. This is done despite the facts that the U.A.R. president does not govern what most informed people - Mr. Cooley included - consider to be a "North African" country and that Nasser and Egypt are mentioned only incidentally in the text.

In actuality, Mr. Cooley's work provides a survey of North Africa's history since the Phoenician colonization. Moreover, it focuses upon the contemporary interrelationship among the various religions, imperialisms, and nationalisms active in the region. Mr. Cooley, a distinguished journalist on the staff of the Christian Science Monitor and a man who knows North Africa well, does not claim to be a historian. Thus, .while his summary of al-Maghrib's - the Arab West's - past is a more than competent catalogue, his representation of the current religious and cultural climate in Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia is more arresting. The link among the author's various preoccupations is provided by the book's central thesis: that a residue of ancient beliefs and attitudes still moves events and people in the region and that we can understand the goals and actions of the present leaders of the area only in light of al-Maghrib's historical experience.

The sections touching upon the stormy relationship between Islam and Christianity and upon Christianity's current place in North Africa are fascinating. The author sets the questions he will deal with as well as the essential mood of his work in the very first chapter, "The Cross Faces the Crescent." He emphasizes the fact that in North Africa, even more than is usually the case in other parts of Afro-Asia, Christianity has been associated in the popular mind as being inseparable from colonialism. Indeed, in the context of al-Maghrib Christianity has been identified with one or another of the political powers of Europe for almost two thousand years.

My only real quibble with the author's remarks on religion is with his following the lead of a number of Western scholars and translating the term "Islam" to mean the equivalent of "surrender" to the will of God. In this reviewer's opinion this is far too passive a meaning to ascribe to a dynamic faith which throughout its existence has been animated by its adherents' purposeful zeal. Certainly, Mr. Cooley himself seems to try to present Islam as an activist's religion. A more positive definition — one that would have helped the author to emphasize the fact that Islam is a very positive creed - would be "commitment" to the will of God, a translation that would enunciate the Islamic ideal of man cooperating with God's purpose.

Mr. Cooley's prose is lively and the book - although it seems rather loosely constructed and episodic in some of the parts devoted to the general historical survey - moves rapidly. Among the work's best features is the author's use of judiciously selected quotations from North African and other sources to underline his main points. Also valuable are the several maps strategically scattered through the volume. In brief, this is a book meant for a general audience and it will serve such a public well. But those who have a more specialized interest in recent world religious trends and in the North African cultural scene also will find Baal, Christ, and Mohammed worth their attention.

Assistant Professor of History