Confronting Political Islam

The pugnacious title gives little indication of the sober historical analysis and sustained political reflection that is the hallmark of this pensive and suggestive work. Though addressed primarily to the Western reader, and adopting a constrictively pragmatic American approach, it is a book that Muslim scholars and critical thinkers would also find quite rewarding. As a matter of fact, in a debate that is notoriously marred by a propensity for immediate responses and quick fixes, it projects a longue durée perspective that reveals the current political discourse as panic-stricken and hysterical, if not downright apocalyptic. Instead, if offers a more bearable, but by no means sanguine, vision of a human world that is frequently at war with itself but which somehow also learns to forgive and forget. The study of history, it suggests, vindicates neither the hope of utopian dreams nor the horror of dystopian nightmares.