Pico Iyer and the Californication of mystical Islam: “…(I)n his latest novel, Abandon, he has turned inward, ostensibly to an exploration of the Islamic mystical tradition called Sufism in search of an alternative to a globalized world. Strangely, the location for his inward search is California, the capital of ultimate banality. One would like to explain this away as a deep Sufi parable, but, a travel writer, Iyer’s approach to Sufism remains that of a tourist among tourists. His Sufism is a marketable mysticism, reduced to small bites of tranquility and enlightenment.” A review by Stephen Schwartz, author of The Two Faces of Islam, who essentially says Iyer gets it wrong. Weekly Standard