Arab books and human development

Another problem with the term 'Islamic books' is that it suggests more unity to Islam than the community demonstrates. There are many different Islams, and consequently many different types of Islamic books. As Haykel argues: "A Shia bookshop in Beirut's southern suburbs will not sell Sunni books and vice ersa in West Beirut. The pattern is repeated wherever the sectarian divide is found." (18) Yet he argues that the financial weight of Saudi Arabia has led to disproportionate Saudi influence in the publishing industry. "It is noticeable that when you go to a book fair in Amman or San'a or Cairo, the Islamic books are cheaper to buy because they tend to have some Saudi or Qatari subsidy," he explains.

In their implicit critique of the 'religious content' of Arab books the authors of the AHDR played into a range of current concerns in America and the West more generally. The 'clash of civilizations' thesis put forward by Samuel Huntington has gained support since the events of 11 September 2001, with many in the West expressing concerns about the 'religious' or Islamic orientation of Arab culture, society and politics. Yet there is no way to diminish the Islamic orientation of current Arab culture, society and politics. Attempts to do so at any level are bound to have the opposite effect intended, making people in the Arab world doubly suspicious of the intentions of the West and more likely to cling more tenaciously to their religion. This is to turn a bad argument into a self-fulfilling prophecy. It is far better to leave the same luxury of choice to Arab consumers as people in the West demand, and recognize that for the foreseeable future books on Islam or written in the language of Islam will continue to find a wide audience--and to recognize that even by the AHDR's count, some 85 percent of Arab books have nothing to do with religion.

CONCLUSION

This essay has been more an exercise in systematic doubt than a case of superior statistics overwhelming those published in the two AHDRs. Given the significance attached by Western commentators and government figures to the Reports' claims about books in the Arab world, the issue warranted further scrutiny. There is good reason to doubt the actual figures provided by the AHDR. It seems likely that far more works are translated and published in Arabic in pirate editions than gets reported by those who try to keep statistics on Arab books. Market concerns limit what publishers deem viable for translation to the local and political. However, Arab readers have access to a broader literature than what is available to them in their own language either because they are literate in Western languages or because they read about foreign books in the press or watch foreign books discussed on television. Indeed, the great public interest shown in book fairs in the Arab world suggests that, whatever the figures on books published and translated, books remain valued cultural artifacts in the Arab world. As for the implied concern about the relative weight of Arabic books on religious topics, this has been dismissed as something of a red herring. The term is too broad to be analytically meaningful. Even if this objection is overlooked, and Arab books on 'religious topics' were deemed a problem, the solutions would be only worse--censorship or repression. Wisdom dictates that in Arab books, as in any other article of consumption, the consumer is king.