Superfood Snacks to reignite your love affair with foods

In my experience, this is a unique book.  It is part cookbook, part dietary compendium, part nutritional encyclopaedia.  It was created out of a need for Christine Margaret to find a way of ridding herself of fibromyalgia syndrome.

The author researched what foods might help her rid herself of a debilitating condition and this led her to ‘superfoods’ – foods that over time or through research had been shown to cure something.  She deals with almost seventy of these in a systematic, easy-to-follow format.

The book includes many common foods that most of us eat already – eggs, tomatoes, mushrooms, honey, grapefruit – and some which are more unfamiliar to us – quinoa, mangosteen, amaranth, chia.  Each food has its own page, on which Margaret lists some of its properties and gives at least one recipe using that food.  Her information about each food quotes a reference, so that the reader can find further information (most of it on-line).

The author also gives the reader further and more detailed information about: anti-oxidants and their role in health; organic, biodynamic and chemical-free growing of foods; what to keep in a well-provisioned pantry; making and freezing stocks; making your own medicines; growing your own superfoods; cooking utensils you should not use and those you can use; conversion tables of English/American food names and metric/imperial measurement conversions; foods that ‘feed’ various parts of the body and enhance certain activities; ORAC levels and protein contents of some foods; foods and cancer; and information about water, milk, salt oils and fats.  An extensive table of contents and a good index help the reader to navigate easily.

This is an excellent book to assist in staying healthy, to help those who are not in optimum health to reach that goal and, of course, to give those in a state of ill-health valuable tools to help them towards good health.  The author makes no medical claims but points the reader to other resources.

Keep this book handy to the kitchen and refer to it often.

© 2011 Daan Spijer

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Tell me The Truth: conversations with my patients about life and death

This is a rare book and the author is a rare physician.  Ranjana Srivastava is an oncologist working in Melbourne.  She questions what she does and how she does it and strives to relate to her patients and their families with honesty and compassion.  The title of the book reflects what many patients ask of her.

The truth is often kept from patients by doctors who do not want to ‘burden’ them with the horrid details of their disease and the patient’s eventual death.  Or the doctor goes along with the patient’s (often futile) hope that more surgery or another round of chemo- or radio-therapy will extend their life.  Sometimes it may, but at what cost?  And there is not just the financial cost (to the patient and to society) but the emotional cost as well.  The author bemoans the fact that there is no adequate training (or none at all) for doctors to teach them how to talk with patients who have a disease that is likely to kill them soon.  Many doctors avoid having to deal with the issue of death and dying, because they are trained to fight disease and prolong life.

What makes the author a rare physician is not just her questioning of what she does and why she does it (I’m sure other doctors do the same), but that she is willing to wrestle with the answers and with her conscience; and that she is willing to share these struggles with the reader.

Many of Ranjana Srivastava’s patients and the patients’ families have been generous in allowing her to include very personal stories in this book.  The author is also generous in the sharing of her own journey as a doctor and as a mother.  The book comprises a collection of stories about individual patients and about episodes in the author’s life which take the reader along as she increases her understanding of the doctor-patient relationship, the different ways in which patients and their families deal with cancer (the suspicion that something is wrong, the diagnosis, the prognosis and the treatment) and how they all deal with dying and death – and the way the author deals with these changes over time.

Because this is a collection of stand-alone pieces, the book can be read a bit at a time.  Alternatively, reading it straight through allows the reader to accompany the author on her very personal journey.  One of the issues the author struggles with is when to stop further medical intervention other than palliative care.  When should someone be told that there is nothing more that the medical profession has to offer?  Should the doctor agree to more chemotherapy when she is convinced that it won’t extend the person’s life and is likely to diminish their enjoyment of what is left of it?  Is it possible to tell accurately how much time a person with cancer has to live?  Does telling them how long you think they have to live influence the course of the disease?

This book is informative and reflective and highly personal.  It is riveting reading with the potential to take many readers on an emotional rollercoaster.  It also gives valuable insight into an aspect of medical practice and the struggles of one doctor in juggling the demands of a busy oncology practice, the needs of patients and their families and the call to share her humanity.

© 2011 Daan Spijer

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Not the Last Goodbye: on life, death, healing and cancer

As it turns out, this book is the last goodbye from author David Servan-Schreiber.  He wrote it during his tussle with brain cancer which had returned after many years.  Servan-Schreiber was author of the book Anticancer: a new way of life (Viking, 2009) and was spokesperson for the Anticancer program; this played an important role in his approach to dealing with his illness.

The author was clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh and co-founder of the Center for Integrative Medicine.

Servan-Schreiber’s attitude to the recurrence of the cancer, is indicated in chapter 16, ‘No Regrets’, in which he says that, if four years earlier he had been told that the hectic pace of his life would lead to the relapse, he would not have lived differently.  His account of his life after learning that the cancer had reasserted itself and may well kill him is remarkable.  There is a sense of the clinician’s dispassionate observation of a patient.  I felt some disappointment with his style, because there are places in the book where I would have liked to learn more of his feelings, especially in the context of his relationship with his wife.  She is there in the story, but the author writes about her – and their relationship – with some of the same clinical dispassion.

All that aside, the book grips the reader and entices the reader to take the rollercoaster ride of diagnosis, prognosis, despair, hope and sadness.  The author struggles with the question of whether to stick strictly to his philosophy as expressed in Anticancer or to veer off the path to use orthodox approaches such as surgery, chemo- and radio-therapies.  He veers.  The overriding motivation seems to be his wish to be there for his children as they grow up – he dedicates the book, in part, to them, saying, “It would grieve me deeply if I were unable to accompany them in their journey through lie.”  This book will have to suffice – it should serve as an inspiration to them.

There are not many people who have the training and will to give an account of their journey with cancer as David Servan-Schreiber has done.  Most accounts of such journeys are from a third-person perspective, as is the case in A Mother’s Final Gift (reviewed here by me recently), or they are from survivors, looking back on the journey.  If not a blueprint for surviving cancer, this book does give a map for one way of living life to the full while dealing with it.  Whether the author made a wise choice on the way is not for us to judge.

© 2011 Daan Spijer

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A Mother’s Final Gift

The ‘gift’ that is the subject of this book was originally a very personal one.  The authors, especially Joyce Vissell, have turned this into a gift to all readers of the book.  Those readers who find their lives transformed by it, can perpetuate the giving.

It is unusual, in our ‘sophisticated’ societies (Australia, New Zealand, North America and much of Western Europe) for anyone to tell their daughter, in her twenties, to celebrate death when it comes, to treat it as an exciting adventure. This sort of talk can seriously upset a young woman who considers herself completely removed from death – something that happens to old people or by accident, not something you plan for, let alone plan to celebrate.  Louisa, the mother of the title, told her daughter that she looked forward to death as a great adventure.  That adventure was to come many decades later.

The authors are both medical doctors and therapists, running groups to help people develop life skills.  Their three children also contribute to the book, which helps make it very personal.  I felt that, as the reader, I had been invited into Joyce and Barry’s home, even to sit by the dying Louise’s bed.  Such openness and honesty could have made the book heavy going.  However, Joyce, in honouring her mother’s gift, brings to the reader Louise’s sense of adventure.

I have read other personal accounts of dying and some have been all light and love.  While A Mother’s Final Gift is suffused with love, the authors do not shy away from any of the pain – emotional and physical, theirs and Louise’s – that inevitably accompany dying for the departing person as well as for those who will be left behind.  This honesty in the accounts of all five contributors, gives the book believability.  It is this honesty, as much as Louise’s gift, that allows the reading of this book to be a transformative experience.

There is more to this book, however, than an honest account of a family’s experience of accompanying someone in their dying.  It shows that it is possible for someone to die in their own home, surrounded by the familiar and by family and friends.  This may not be possible for everyone but, with good planning and good support, it would be available to so many more people who are now taken into the medical mill and lose most of their autonomy and, effectively, most of their rights.  It was fortunate for Louisa and her family that Hospice services were available for her to die at home.  Dying is not a medical condition and we do not deserve to have it treated as such.  A Mother’s Final Gift is testament to this.

For many people, their fear of death and of dying prevents them truly living.  It was Louisa’s embracing of her death as part of life that allowed her to live her life to the full.

© 2011 Daan Spijer

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Disconnect

This is an important book for the information it provides.  At the same time, it is poorly written and/or poorly edited.  Let me get the negative out of the way first.

Devra Davis is a scientist with a PhD and other written works to her name.  I would have expected her to be clearer and more precise in her use of the English language and clearer in her logical exposition.  I found whole paragraphs repeated in different sections of the book and, in some areas, gaps in explanations of important concepts or data.  The irony in this is palpable: the disconnect of the title refers largely to the gap in what is known by the telecommunications industry and by governments and what is communicated to the public.

Despite these, perhaps minor, failings, the book delivers to the reader a chilling litany of subterfuge, outright dishonesty, obfuscation and misinformation.  According to the author, there is enough data that indicates potential and likely health concerns with the use of mobile phones, to warrant the issuing of strong warnings to users, especially children and teens.  This data has been in existence since the early days of mobile phones.  Despite this, the industry keeps calling for more studies to be done and governments, apparently at the behest or urging of the industry, relaxes safety regulations instead of strengthening them.  A cynic might conclude from this that the profitability of the industry is more important than the health of users of the phones.

As with other books I have reviewed recently¹, Disconnect should be read by everyone, in order that the size of the informed (and consequently concerned) public may grow to the extent that it may exert sufficient pressure on governments to offer all of us better protection.  And we can choose to use these devices with more circumspection, or not at all.  It is through the efforts of people such as Devra Davis that we, the consumers of ‘whiz-bang’ technology that we ‘cannot do without’, learn more about the consequences of using ubiquitous devices and can change our habits in an appropriate way.

1. Health-related books reviewed on this site:

• Devil in the Milk
• The Panic Virus
• The Force

© 2011 Daan Spijer

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The Book of Lies

Mary Horlock twists her yarns expertly into the strands that form the lay of rope that winds its way through a difficult, interconnected past and present on the Island of Guernsey. She tackles aspects of the Nazi occupation in the Second World War and the struggles of a teenage girl more than forty years later.  Horlock uses her extensive and intimate knowledge of the island and its people, along with an understanding of teenage angst and imagination, to give us an inspired tale of family frictions, loyalties, courage, deception and betrayal, loss, love and loneliness.

There are aspects of this book that reminded me of Kate Grenville’s Joan Makes History (QUP, 1998), in that Horlock ‘creates’ history out of known and imagined events, without the story seeming in any way to be synthetic.  This is a legitimate pursuit, as it brings to the reader imagined detail based on rigorous research.  It offers new perspectives and makes often-neglected past events available to us. (For an argument in favour of this view, see Peter Cochrane’s essay, ‘Exploring the historical imagination’, in Griffith Review 31, Text Publishing, autumn 2011.)

The Book of Lies is riveting – despite its 288 pages, I read it in three days.  I felt compelled to keep reading as this multi-layered tale grabbed me and pulled me along.  The two main strands are the stories told by fifteen-year-old Cathy in the ‘present’ of 1985 and by her uncle, Charlie, recounting, in 1965, events from the war.  Misunderstandings and assumptions pepper both stories and bring them together in a surprising way in the last few pages.  Placing the protagonists on an island focuses the reader geographically, giving the author more temporal freedom.

The Book of Lies is an interesting title for a work that plays with questions of truth and questionable truth.  The author explores how different people have different truths about an event and how this allows for the invention of lies, and she also examines straight-out lies told for reasons the perpetrator may not even be able to fathom; and there are lies which are employed in attempts to save lives and relationships.

Novels need to entertain.  However, they are so much better if they also teach us something new and open doors to places we don’t know.  The Book of Lies does all of this brilliantly.

© 2011 Daan Spijer

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Devil in the Milk

Most people in Australia, New Zealand, North America and Europe drink cow’s milk, some in large quantities and many from an early age.  What Prof Woodford writes about in this book should therefore be of concern to hundreds of millions of people.  It is a story of research, business, government and vested interests.  Those whose interests seem to be least considered in the way milk is presented to us are the consumers of the milk.

Although I suggest that you read the book for yourself for its clarity and detail, I will give a summary of the issues it deals with.  Keith Woodford is Professor of Farm Management and Agribusiness in New Zealand.  He explains and expands on broadly two types of bovine milk: A1 and A2.  Cows that produce A1 milk are descended from cows that around eight to ten thousand years ago went through a genetic mutation.  A2 milk is the original, un-mutated variant.

The difference between the two types of milk is that in the A1 variant there is a substitution of an amino acid in a particular position on a casein (milk protein) molecule.  This substitution can cause a seven-amino acid fragment to break off when digested.  This fragment, known as beta-casomorphone-7 (BCM7), has opioid (narcotic) properties and may be a factor in developing autism in susceptible individuals.  It also appears to play a role in some auto-immune conditions, including Type 1 (early-onset) diabetes, as well as possibly causing arterial disease in later life.  Prof Woodford presents compelling evidence for all of the above.

A2 milk is now readily available in Australia and New Zealand.  The relevant gene that is responsible for the A1 variant is co-dominant with the original A2 variant, as a result of which cows produce 100% A2 milk or 50% of both A1 and A2 milk or 100% A1 milk.  Because of this, it is straightforward to breed cows to produce 100% A2 milk and, therefore, to breed entire herds to do so; consequently, it is possible to create a supply of pure A2 milk.  Theoretically this would be possible around the world and it would be feasible to breed out the A1-producing cows entirely in about ten years.  The material in this book seems to make that a logical choice and it would have huge beneficial health results.  Even though the evidence supporting such a move has been clear and available for some seven years, it hasn’t happened and is unlikely to happen for some time.  Why?

Devil in the Milk explains this clearly: commercial vested interests and government regulators apparently are more concerned with protecting the dairy industry than in protecting and improving people’s health.  One of the main factors in this is Fontera, a company that controls more than half of the world trade in dairy products as well as over 90% of the New Zealand dairy industry and almost half of the Australia industry.  It seems that Fontera does not want to allow the breeding out of A1 cows as this may have consumers questioning the safety of the milk they are currently drinking, which could lead to an overall drop in milk consumption which would, in turn, hurt Fontera’s profits.

It is shameful that so frequently our wellbeing is compromised in the interest of commercial enterprise.  However, in the case of milk, we can use our ‘consumer power’ to purchase only A2 milk (available from all major Australian supermarkets and widely in New Zealand) and force the dairy industry to change.  In countries where A2 milk is not marketed, consumers can demand that it be made available.

Prof Woodford has done a wonderful job at bringing together all the scientific, commercial and political elements of the story and presenting it in a straightforward and uncomplicated way.  The reader needs no scientific or statistical knowledge, as none is assumed in the evidence presented and in the explanation and discussion of the evidence.  I commend this book to anyone who is concerned with looking after their own health and that of their children and it should be compulsory reading for all doctors, dieticians, nutritionists, naturopaths and other healthcare practitioners.

© 2011 Daan Spijer

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The Panic Virus: Fear, Myth and the Vaccination Debate

When we are dealing with large issues that have a huge impact on society and the lives of the individuals in that society, it is important that we have available to us books such as The Panic Virus, to assist us in navigating our way.  Vaccination is a global phenomenon with almost global support from governments and the medical professions, from academics and the World Health Organisation.  It also has its many opponents and detractors.  There are powerful and emotional arguments on both sides of the debate.

Before going on to a review of this book, I need to declare that I am a sceptic on this topic, not convinced that universal vaccination is, on balance, a good thing; but willing to be convinced that it is, given enough credible evidence.

The Panic Virus is one of the rare books I have read that has helped to inform me on this vexed question.  It sits on the pro-side of the fence whole most of the other books I have read have been anti-vaccination.  However, the author’s main aim seems to be to highlight the misinformation that has come into the public debate from many of the anti-vaccination groups and individuals, as well as from governments and government (health) departments; and the far-from helpful role played by many media outlets.  He is very scathing of the media.

One area that the author expands on is that of the MMR vaccine and the claim that it can cause autism.  He is highly critical of groups and individuals who keep this possibility alive when the evidence seems to be overwhelmingly against it.  His major criticism is that the continued lobbying for recognition of the MMR vaccine as a cause of autism is diverting limited resources from research that may uncover some of the actual causes of this increasingly prevalent condition.  In the process, Seth Mnookin examines the role played by Andrew Wakefield and the questions around that doctor’s integrity and those who have collaborated with him.

The title of the book refers to Seth Mnookin’s claim that the way that governments and the media have dealt with questions of vaccine safety has led to panic reactions amongst parents, which in turn has led to large numbers of parents not having their children vaccinated.

The Panic Virus can help inform parents about some of the issues relating to mass vaccination but I don’t believe that the book would offer them much beyond that, other than perhaps having them look elsewhere than vaccines as a cause of autism¹.  This is a book about politics and social commentary.

My only criticism of this book is the tone occasionally used by the author – he seems to be trying to be a dispassionate reporter of facts and opinions (Seth Mnookin is a journalist) but from time to time he is emotional in his comments.  I found this somewhat confusing and also felt that he was telling me what my attitude should be.  I still think that this book offers the reader valuable insights into a difficult set of issues: whether to vaccinate children; the role of governments in mandating medical treatment; the manipulation of data (immunological and epidemiological); the role of special interest groups and lobby groups; the role of the media in reporting on medical and social issues and in leading debate; and the role of the courts in mediating conflicting interests.

Seth Mnookin has done us all a service by investigating some of the difficult questions surrounding mass vaccination and offering us his thoughts and insights in this valuable book.

• See for instance: Devil in the Milk, Keith Woodford, Craig Potton Publishing, NZ, 2007

© 2011 Daan Spijer

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Be Indignant! This is the call to action from a veteran of the World War II French Resistance. This is not a voice coming to us from the past but the current voice of a now still-feisty 93-year-old writing less than a year ago.
It is rare to hear something so up-to-date and relevant from a man of such age – often such people are still stuck in the past, a time when they were actively involved in a righteous struggle. Stéphane Hessel was active in the French Resistance in the 1940s and was attached to de Gaulle’s government-in-exile. He escaped from the Nazis a number of times, including the day before he was due to be hanged. In 1948 he was one of twelve people involved in the drafting of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, along with such people as Eleanor Roosevelt. He was appointed French ambassador to the UN in Geneva in 1977 and holds a life-long diplomatic passport, which he still uses to visit places like Palestine, to see first-hand what is happening there.

Hessel’s short (less than 18 pages) call references contemporary political and social situations and implores especially young people to be indignant about government excesses and dishonesty, the erosion of rights and freedoms and the atrocities perpetrated by States such as Israël. He calls for expression of outrage at injustices, wherever they occur.

In Australia we are witness to injustice on a continual basis, against Aborigines, poor people, asylum seekers, people who are perceived as different and those who don’t fit in. More than sixty years after the overthrow of the fascists in Europe, we do not seem to have progressed very far. This is what angers Hessel and has him call us to (non-violent) action. While not condoning violence, he is nevertheless understanding of its roots for those people who live in despair because of the actions (and inactions) of many governments.

Scribe Publishing has made this not just a compelling publication with this translation by Damion Searls, but has made it fascinating by including Hessel’s original French treatise, as well as an Afterword (in English) by this edition’s editor, Sylvie Crossman, which sets an historical context for Hessel and shows that he has always been fearlessly willing to voice unpopular opinions.

The inclusion of the original French text would make this a very useful work for students of French. The translation is excellent, yet there is added pleasure to be had from the cadences and rhythms of the original. Even though my French is no longer good, I thoroughly enjoyed reading the original.

The whole English text can be read in under an hour and benefits from re-reading to appreciate the real power of what the author is saying. His call is not to oppose elected governments, but to hold them to account and to insist that they honour the rights embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and that they not try to define them out of existence, as George W Bush and others have attempted to do. Stéphane Hessel sounds urgent in his call and he should be – we are witnessing a continual erosion of many things that make our enjoyment of life possible and we need people such as Hessel to keep pricking us to stay awake.

© 2011 Daan Spijer

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In some respects this is a timely book and at the same time it is a shame it was not available ten years ago, as it may have helped to inform the debate at a time that John Howard was trying to change the values we live by and the understanding we have of those values.

This is a collection of six essays by prominent thinkers, edited by Raimond Gaita¹, philosopher and author. The extensive Introduction and the final essay are by Gaita; the other contributors are Geoffrey Brahm Levey, Waleed Aly, Shakira Hussein, Graeme Davison and Ghassan Hage. Each contributor gives a different voice to the issues, yet all come to compatible conclusions. All are critical of the way the questions around the subject have been handled – by politicians, the media and commentators of varying political persuasions.

USA President George W Bush was one of many people who after the atrocities of 11th September 2001 declared that the world had changed dramatically and for ever. That it did (if it did) was largely the result of the changes in rhetoric and in thinking. One of the changes that is apparent is the different way that Muslims were thought about and talked about in Australia and, from reports in the media and on the Internet, in North America and Europe. It is this change in thought and speech that is the consistent element in the essays in this book.

The six essayists approach the subject in the title from different perspectives and using different styles in their approaches, yet there is much overlap in what they say. It allows the reader to see the issues as if through different facets of the same crystal.

Geoffrey Brahm Levey² opens with an essay titled ‘Multiculturalism and Terror’. He is a teacher of political theory and is involved in writing about Jews in society. Like most of the other contributors, he addresses the myths surrounding the notions of multiculturalism and terror and shows why they are myths. The central argument in his piece is that “multiculturalism, as we know it, is a way of integrating a culturally diverse population based on shared liberal democratic values”. He goes on to argue that if there is a connection between multiculturalism and global terrorism it is a result of our failure to honour multiculturalism’s constraints and their underlying liberal democratic values. He expands his examination of the issues from the tenet that democratic liberalism recognises the rights of the individual rather than those of the group and that, therefore, no individual should be labelled in relation to any group she or he may belong to or be seen or imagined to belong to.

In ‘Monoculturalism, Muslims and Myth Making’, Waleed Aly³ shows how the media and others distort events and even fabricate them in order to create antipathy – even hostility – towards Muslims in the UK and Australia. He quotes many made-up and misreported articles and those using misleading headlines designed to shock. “This kind of fictional news story should be the rarest of exceptions. But it is not and, where Muslims are concerned, it is becoming something of an emerging genre.” He looks at all this in relation to the creation of ‘folk devils’ and the ‘mythical us’. “[T]hese fictional stories exist because a particular conspiratorial world view … demands they do.” Aly argues that ‘we’ go along with the myth-making because it suits us, as individuals and as a society.

In her essay, ‘On Being Muslim and Australian: Reflections from the Badshahi Mosque’, Shakira Hussein⁴ takes a more personal approach than the other contributors. She starts at the Mosque, in Lahore, with a young Pakistani man, Ibrahim. He wants her to feel that the Mosque is hers – that she belongs. She concludes with a similar, though imagined, gesture in front of the Sydney Opera House, offering it to Ibrahim as a symbol of his belonging, should he come to Australia. In between these bookends she examines some of what is wrong in Pakistani society, including the treatment of women, and some of what is right. She dispels myths we in Australia have about Muslim societies such as that in Pakistan. She examines the reasons many Pakistanis believe she would not be safe living in Australia. She writes that “as communicators [in Australia] become more and more preoccupied with ‘the Muslim problem’, Muslims of all class, ethnic and sectarian backgrounds found themselves ascribed a common identity, and a common stigma.” This common identity ascribed to Muslims, inside and outside Australia, by Australian commentators and media is discussed in most of the other essays as well – our inability or unwillingness to see them as individuals and treat them as such. Much of Hussein’s essay deals with the ‘Lebanese rapes’ in Sydney and how this effected relations between Muslims and non-Muslims and how these events were treated within Muslim groups in Australia, a treatment that may surprise some readers.

Graeme Davison’s⁵ essay, ‘Testing Times: Citizenship and National Values’, looks at the issues surrounding multiculturalism from a different angle. He argues that there is a growing “appeal for the reinvigoration of ‘national values’ ” and a growing nationalism with a call “to reinforce the allegiance of citizens and newcomers to national traditions”. Much of the pressure for this has come as a response to growing numbers of refugees, while growing globalisation is also a factor in the sense of loss of national pride felt by many people in the UK and the rest of Europe and in Australia. Davison questions whether it is possible to define what it means to be British or Australian and he looks at the struggles in both countries over the methods to be employed to ensure that immigrants understand ‘Australian values’ or ‘British values’. He questions the role of citizenship tests and values statements, saying they are “a symptom of an unresolved tension in our political culture”. Most of the essay is a discussion and examination of these points.

Ghassan Hage⁶ titles his essay ‘Multiculturalism and the Ungovernable Muslim’. “Ungovernability is not an essential quality of the object to be governed. It is a quality that emerges when something escapes the relation between a government apparatus and what it is aiming to govern.” Hage argues that Muslims did not supplant Asians in Australia as the “core threatening other” until the turn of the century. One factor that sets Muslims apart from other ethnic immigrants is that for many of them “all aspects of [their] everyday life [is] ruled by the laws of [their] God”, which can lead to a negation of the law of the land as governing aspects of one’s life. The atrocities of 11th September 2001 and the later Bali, Madrid and London bombings placed Muslims in many people’s minds as being ‘other’ to the West and its aspirations and ideals. Hage further argues that there is a problem when a group is assimilated into a host society and then feels ostracised from that society, as with the London bombers. As such, it is the same tension that prompts other marginalised people to react, sometimes violently. As with some of the other essayists, Hage looks at the events leading up to the ‘Cronulla riots’ and their aftermath. He finishes his essay with an examination of the Muslim minority in Australia, arguing that there is an intense reaction to a fear of Muslims, coming from a sense of insecurity which “is rooted in the way the press of globalisation has rendered fragile people’s structural integration into their nation states”.

Raimond Gaiter¹ concludes the collection with ‘Multiculturalism, Love of Country and Responses to Terrorism”. He examines “some of the ideas that inform the belief that successful multiculturalism must undermine an attachment to nation that goes deeper than dutiful citizenship … [that] deserves to be called love of country.” He dismisses the call for recognition of Sharia Law and argues that at times of external threat, loyalty to Australia must override all other loyalties. There is a need for immigrants to understand “in their bones” what it is that makes Australian society what it is and that sets it aside from many others. While the terrorist actions that have been perpetrated by Muslims in the past decade can explain the fear of Muslims felt by many people, Gaita argues that “we in Australia have reason to fear only the murderous ambitions of a handful of radical Muslims driven by a religion based totalitarian politics.” Much of his argument relies on a view of moral human behaviour having pre-eminence over most other considerations, while “morality and politics are … in a deep way answerable to one another”.

As a seven-year-old migrant from the Netherlands in 1955, I experienced first-hand the suspicion many people have of ‘other’. I dressed differently, spoke no English to start with, ate different food and did not understand the behaviour of the Australian children at school. Although I cannot remember it clearly, I was probably bewildered. I do remember my at first urgent attempts to fit in and then giving up with an attitude of ‘I’ll be how I am and I don’t care what you think.’ As I grew older I observed the same tensions in other migrants and children from a range of mainly European countries. Though a migrant myself, I sometimes felt suspicious of the behaviour of other migrants because they seemed so different. Reading this book has prompted me to look at these phenomena in a new way and has taken me closer to developing answers for myself both as a migrant and as an Australian.

This is a very satisfying collection of essays on a topic that causes many people anxieties and fears and engages political parties, the media, social commentators and community leaders in continual and passionate debate. The satisfaction comes in part from the many angles from which the contributors view the overall issues and in part because the six essays help the reader to ponder how his or her attitudes to migrants and refugees generally and Muslims in particular are born and shaped, especially by others. There is rich material for discussion and I can see a valuable place for this book in secondary school curricula. It should also be compulsory reading by all our politicians, many of whom so readily fan the glowing embers of suspicion into flames of hatred.

 
1. Emeritus Professor of Moral Philosophy at King’s College London, and Professorial Fellow at Melbourne Law School and the Faculty of Arts at University of Melbourne. Romulus, My Father (Text, 1988), A Common Humanity (Routledge, 2000), The Philosopher’s Dog (Text, 2002), Why the War was Wrong (ed., Text, 2003) and Good and Evil: an Absolute Conception (Routledge, 2004, 2nd ed.).
2. Teaches political theory at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, where he was founding Director of the Program in Jewish Studies. Jews and Australian Politics (co-ed with Philip Mendes, Sussex Academic Press, 2004), Political Theory and Australian Multiculturalism (ed., Berghahn Books, 2008) and Secularism, Religion and Multicultural Citizenship (co-ed. with Tariq Modood, Cambridge University Press, 2008).
3. Lecturer and PhD candidate in the School of Political and Social Enquiry at Monash University. He is a regular media contributor. People Like Us: how arrogance is dividing Islam and the West (Pan Macmillan, 2007)
4. Is undertaking a McKenzie postdoctoral fellowship on Muslim women, gender violence and racism at the National Centre for Excellence in Islamic Studies, University of Melbourne. She is a regular media contributor.
5. Sir John Monash Distinguished Professor in the Department of History at Monash University. The Rise and Fall of Marvellous Melbourne (Melbourne University Press, 2004), The Unforgiving Minute: how Australia learned to tell the time (Oxford University Press, 1993), The Oxford Companion of Australian History (co-ed. with John Hirst & Stuart Macintyre, Oxford University Press, 1998), The Use and Abuse of Australian History (Allen & Unwin, 2000) and Car Wars: how the car won our hearts and conquered our cities (Allen & Unwin, 2004).
6. Future Generation Professor of Anthropology and Social Theory at the University of Melbourne. Home/World: space, community and marginality in Sydney’s west (contrib., Pluto Press, 1997), White Nation: fantasies of white supremacy in a multicultural society (Pluto Press, 1998), Arab Australians Today: citizenship and belonging (ed., Deakin University, 2002), Against Paranoid Nationalism (Pluto Press, 2003) and Waiting (ed., Melbourne University Press, 2009).

© 2011 Daan Spijer

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