Review of The Cambridge Companion to Modern Arab Culture

Dwight F. Reynolds is the author of the book “The Cambridge Companion to Modern Arab Culture”. It was published in 2015. Reynolds covers a very broad variety of topics within this book from Arab cinema to Arab religion to Arab cuisine. In reality all of the topics that he chose to focus on all have a relationship with each other. For example, poetry, narrative, music, architecture, art, theater, and cinema are all aesthetics. All of these aesthetics are a form of art in

some fashion. Below we will discuss these in the broader scope of significance(Reynolds, 2015).

Another example is language in relation to ethnic and religious minorities. Language and religion was a barrier in determining who was discriminated against and oppressed in the Arab world. Furthermore, with the Arab-Israeli conflict the Palestinians Arabs had a certain ethnic

identity including their Arabic language regardless of their religious affiliations of either Muslim or Christian. On the other hand, the Jews had an opposing ethnic identity of being Jewish regardless of Sephardic or Ashkenazi affiliation with their opposing aspirations of geographical

dominance. With the Israelis winning several wars the Palestinian Arabs eventually were excessively displaced and migrated to neighboring Arab countries or abroad. This resulted in the establishment of the state of Israel and its recognition by political powerhouses such as the

United States of America. This also resulted in Palestinian Arabs now being an oppressed minority in a country that they once were a successful and established majority(Reynolds, 2015).

For my final example of how these topics are intertwined let’s look at migration and diaspora in relation to cuisine. In general, when a population of people are oppressed and have scarcity of food they make do and preserve what they have to make cuisine. Following the 1948

Arab-Israeli war and the establishment of the state of Israel the Palestinians coined this time of history with the term “Nakba”. Nakba means catastrophe or disaster. They gave it this name because of the oppression and displacement of their people from their land. Through Nakba many Palestinians had a hard time and experienced food scarcity. However out of that food scarcity came something beautiful, cuisine and cuisine shapes cultural identity. They created cuisines like their Arab fellows did with hummus. Those are examples of how some of the topics

in this book are interconnected with one another and how they are significant. Those are the reasons Reynolds chose those topics because they are very much related to each other (Reynolds, 2015).

Reynolds ordered the topics in a fashion that presented language as preceding ethnic and religious minorities as well as migration and diaspora following directly after food and cuisine. He also ordered the book to present all of the aesthetics of poetry, narrative, theatre, cinema, art, architecture and music as a cluster of chapters all in the middle of the book with one following another. That is why I believe that Reynolds constructed this book in the way he did so that the topics can be in relation with one another(Reynolds, 2015).

Can you explore a culture without looking at its politics? One topic that I wished he would’ve covered more is politics by giving it its own chapter. I believe that he did not give the politics of the Arab world its own chapter because politics can be very controversial and hard to

understand. Politics can also be ambiguous in whether justice was served, should it be served, and who should it be served for.

Nevertheless, I believe if there is going to be a book about the Arab world and its culture there needs to be a chapter dedicated to politics because we can’t avoid conversation about the confusing, ambiguous, and hard to talk about topics because if we don’t discuss them then nothing will be done, justice won’t be served, and change will not come.

Besides politics I love how Reynolds covered the Arab culture with his wide variety of topics. However, politics definitely has a hand in shaping culture, such as who is allowed to display their culture on the media eventually spreading their culture to the masses and government propaganda as a few examples.