The Modern Middle East or Faith Reason and the War Against Jihadism

The Modern Middle East: A History

Author: James L Gelvin

In the wake of 11 September 2001, there has been much talk about the inevitable clash between "East" and "West." This book presents an alternative approach to understanding the genealogy of contemporary events. By taking students and the general reader on a guided tour of the past five hundred years of Middle Eastern history, this book examines how the very forces associated with global "modernity" have shaped social, economic, cultural, and political life in the region. Beginning with the first glimmerings of the current international state and economic systems in the sixteenth century, The Modern Middle East: A History explores the impact of imperial and imperialist legacies, the great nineteenth-century transformation, cultural continuities and upheavals, international diplomacy, economic booms and busts, the emergence of authoritarian regimes, and the current challenges to those regimes on everyday life in an area of vital concern to us all.
Engagingly written, drawing from the author's own research and other studies, and stocked with maps and photographs, original documents and an abundance of supplementary materials, The Modern Middle East: A History will provide both novices and specialists with fresh insights into the events that have shaped history and the debates about them that have absorbed historians.

Table of Contents:

	Introduction : September 11 in historical perspective	1
1	From late antiquity to the dawn of a new age	15
2	Gunpowder empires	27
3	The Middle East and the modern world system	35
4	War, diplomacy, and the new global balance of power	47
5	Defensive developmentalism	73
6	Imperialism	88
7	Wasif Jawhariyyeh and the great nineteenth-century transformation	100
	Photo essay : the great transformation	111
8	The life of the mind	123
9	Secularism and modernity	132
10	Constitutionalism	139
11	State-building by decree	175
12	State-building by revolution and conquest	186
13	The introduction and spread of nationalism	197
14	The origins of the Arab-Israeli dispute	206
15	State and society in the contemporary Middle East : an old/new relationship	231
16	Oil	247
17	The United States and the Middle East	257
18	Israel, the Arab states, and the Palestinians	268
19	The Iranian revolution	278
20	Islamic political movements	291
	Conclusion : the Middle East in the "age of globalization"	300

Book review: Constitutional Law for a Changing America or American Fascists

Faith, Reason, and the War Against Jihadism: A Call to Action

Author: George Weigel

“History must be made to march in the direction of genuine human progress; world affairs have no intrinsic momentum that necessarily results in the victory of decency. Maintaining the morale necessary to achieving progress in history requires us to live our lives, today, against a moral horizon of responsibility that is wider and deeper than the quest for personal satisfactions. The future of our civilization does not rest merely on the advance of material wealth and technological prowess; the future of the West turns on the question of whether our spiritual aspirations are noble or base.”
—from Faith, Reason, and the War Against Jihadism

More than half a decade after 9/11, safe passage through a moment of history fraught with both peril and possibility requires Americans across the political spectrum to see things as they are.

In this incisive, engaging study of the present danger and what we must do to prevail against it, George Weigel, one of America’s foremost public intellectuals, does precisely that: he sees, and describes, things as they are—and as they might be. Drawing on a quarter century of experience at the intersection of moral argument and public policy, he describes rigorously and clearly the threat posed by global jihadism: the religiously inspired ideology which teaches that it is the moral obligation of all Muslims to employ whatever means are necessary to compel the world’s submission to Islam. Exploring that ideology’s theological, social, cultural, and political roots, Weigel points a new direction for both public policy and interreligious dialogue, one that meets the challenge of jihadismforthrightly while creating the conditions for a less threatening, more mutually enriching encounter between Islam and the West.

Essential reading in a time of momentous political decisions, Faith, Reason, and the War Against Jihadism is a clarion call for a new seriousness of debate and a new clarity of purpose in American public life.

Publishers Weekly

Addressing Islamic terrorism and America's response as a global leader, Catholic commentator Weigel (senior fellow, Ethics and Public Policy Center, and author of Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II) argues that "[t]he great human questions, including the great questions of public life, are ultimately theological." This short book, comprising 15 "lessons" in sections entitled "Understanding the Enemy," "Rethinking Realism" and "Deserving Victory," covers such topics as key strands of Islamic thought, the dangers of Western "appeasement" of terrorists and the case for regime change in Iran as well as the development of alternative transportation fuels and the elimination of nuclear weapons. Weigel asserts that jihadism arises not from poverty or the existence of the state of Israel but from Islamic fundamentalism's "theological roots." He presents a cogent case that winning the war against terrorism means winning the war of ideas: America must overcome its "self-contempt" because cultural confidence, he insists, is key. Unsurprisingly, Weigel rejects so-called postmodernist relativism and uncritical multiculturalism; his idea of what constitutes realism-such as President Bush's post 9/11 foreign policy or the existence of objective moral truths-may not be shared by those with different political convictions, but this book contains thought-provoking analysis. (Dec. 26)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

School Library Journal

Addressing Islamic terrorism and America's response as a global leader, Catholic commentator Weigel (senior fellow, Ethics and Public Policy Center, and author of Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II) argues that "[t]he great human questions, including the great questions of public life, are ultimately theological." This short book, comprising 15 "lessons" in sections entitled "Understanding the Enemy," "Rethinking Realism" and "Deserving Victory," covers such topics as key strands of Islamic thought, the dangers of Western "appeasement" of terrorists and the case for regime change in Iran as well as the development of alternative transportation fuels and the elimination of nuclear weapons. Weigel asserts that jihadism arises not from poverty or the existence of the state of Israel but from Islamic fundamentalism's "theological roots." He presents a cogent case that winning the war against terrorism means winning the war of ideas: America must overcome its "self-contempt" because cultural confidence, he insists, is key. Unsurprisingly, Weigel rejects so-called postmodernist relativism and uncritical multiculturalism; his idea of what constitutes realism-such as President Bush's post 9/11 foreign policy or the existence of objective moral truths-may not be shared by those with different political convictions, but this book contains thought-provoking analysis. (Dec. 26)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Kirkus Reviews

Liberal apologists should quit pussyfooting around and recognize the inherent corruption of Islam. So says Weigel (God's Choice: Pope Benedict XVI and the Future of the Catholic Church, 2005, etc.), who finds America besieged from the outside by terrorists looking to take over the country and from within by secularists seemingly content to let them. In other words, readers looking for a nuanced, balanced analysis of current world affairs will be disappointed. Weigel divides his book into 15 lessons, presumably learned during the time he spent in right-wing think tanks rather than, say, traveling to the Middle East or speaking with Arab or Islamic scholars. The book is devoid of depictions of Muslims as anything other than people bent on the wholesale destruction of all Americans hold dear. If the goal is to understand Islamic terrorism, surely Weigel could come up with better sources than Pope Benedict XVI or neo-conservative scholars Bernard Lewis and Samuel Huntington, three people from whom he borrows so much material that they should get ink in the acknowledgements. His "lessons" can be easily summarized: Islam is corrupt, Christianity is naturally better and unless Americans realize this and develop the required "cultural self-confidence," they will lose and the Arabs will win. Any contrary evidence, from the Crusades to Abu Ghraib, is summarily dismissed as bellyaching from the blame-America crowd. Weigel's analysis of the energy crisis is cogent, but too often he is blinded by narrow-minded parochialism. He is a natural prose stylist, and the book is pretty snappy-perhaps because his ideas are so simplistic. A slim, easy-to-read volume that will appeal to readers of the NationalReview.