SOURCE: Gilmour, David. “A Second Look at the Faithful.” Spectator 280, no. 8856 (2 May 1998): 30-1.

In the following review, Gilmour considers Beyond Belief to be a sequel to Among the Believers, contending that Naipaul's approach in Beyond Belief is “patient, fastidious and skeptical, generally compassionate to individuals if not to the societies to which they belong.”

Sir Vidia Naipaul doesn't like religions. He especially dislikes Islam, which he regards as a sterile faith imposed by Arab imperialism. And his lip really curls during his encounters with ‘fundos’, Muslim fundamentalists in Pakistan.

In 1979 he visited Iran, a few months after the fall of the Shah, and Pakistan, where President Zia was installed in incompetent tyranny. His consequent book, Among the Believers, which also recounted his journeys in Malaysia and Indonesia, described a religion which was negative, unregenerate and obsessed by purity and mediaeval punishment. Fundamentalism ‘pushed men to an unappeasable faith...