Product Description

"The ultimate manifestation of jihad began with the attack against New York. From Egypt to the Emirates, I made observations and extracted confessions". One of the world's foremost experts on Islam and Islamism, Kepel returned to the Middle East even as New York was still struggling with shock and dust. This book is a dispatch from history's most contentious region during a period of breaking news. While sensing the omens of a new war, Kepel's account reveals that - as ever - the realities are more complex than commonly understood. Bin Laden is popular and religious fervour is on the rise, but many people have also found the path of moderation without blunting their critical instincts. Kepel also asks the question that may be the key to making sense of it all: Why is there so much resentment towards, but fascination for, the West?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #899846 in Books
• Published on: 2003-01-13
• Original language: French
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 144 pages

Review
'Kepel is a master at teasing out conflicts within cultures and within individuals. He writes with deep knowledge, sympathy and engagement.' Washington Post 'This short, very personal and occasionally lyrical diary valiantly attempts to rid us of preconceptions ... engaging and revealing, it reminds the reader that opinion in the Arab world is as divided, diverse and polarized on the great questions of the day as it is in the west.' The Financial Times 'Bad Moon Rising is peppered with illuminating observations. The book provides an ominous insight into the negative repercussions that will inevitably follow the US-led military invasion of Iraq.' The Table 'An incisive and exciting book by the most eminent specialist on Islamic affairs.' Le Nouvel Observateur 'A fantastic book.' Le Figaro 'A brilliant piece of writing.' Le Point

About the Author
Gilles Kepel is professor at the Institute of Political Studies in Paris, where he teaches a doctoral programme on the Muslim world. He is author of Jihad: the Rise and Decline of Islam and The Prophet and Pharaoh, published by Saqi Books.

Customer Reviews

The Middle East and IR post-9/11
Gilles Kepel’s latest book provides an apparently easy, but well-written and very valuable reading of the Middle East today. Eloquent in overview and with the author’s ability to take up complex issues in the context of a narrative – Kepel’s travels in the Middle East and the United States in 2001 – this book is close to the tradition of “journey writings” of earlier Arabists and Orientalists, but with a much less romantic depiction of the Middle East and with a returning Occidentalist criticism of the policies and history of involvement of Western powers in the region. This is not an easy task, but Kepel strikes straight to the heart of the target in a direct and very unpretentious way. It is a work of an experienced scholar liberated from the bonds of dense references and academic fashion, trying in brief to give a personally experienced status quo of the Middle East and the United States after 9/11 – an almost instant reflection, based on extensive traveling, interviews, and personal encounters.
The book falls in three sections. The first and biggest part is devoted to a roundtrip of the Middle East, from Lebanon’s rubbles to Dubai’s towers of high-modernity. The second part engages the Peace Process and the Second Intifada, but the book ends in a return to the United States, as an indication of where the conclusions in the political life of the Middle East are taken and administered these days.
Social, economic, political, demographic, and religious factors are interwoven in this attempt to take the temperature on especially Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, the Arabian Peninsula, and, in perspective, the wider region. Contemporary political issues are viewed in the context of the globalizing forces shaping the Middle East on many levels, from politics over architecture to pop-music and dress-codes. Islam is refreshingly treated as a living and negotiated religion summed up in the author’s own subtle definition of religion:

“perhaps religion is only the crystallization of far larger conflicts: the language in which to express, for lack of better alternative, the vast disquiet in the civilization of Muslim societies, the relation – both intimate and conflicted – in which they are intertwined with the Western world.” (11)

This sociological perspective on religion is shown particularly well in references to the many interviews with leading intellectuals such as the writer Gamal al-Ghitani (14ff.), Issam al-Erian of the Muslim Brotherhood (17ff.), Ismail Abu Shanab and Dr. Mahmoud Zahhar of Hamas (116; 118), Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi (60ff.) and the Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat (108-111), which demonstrate the internal discrepancies between key players of the region in relation to Islam and politics in general. The inherent analysis of the media underlines the influential and often controversial coverages from al-Jazeera and its propagation of for example Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi (18), the media’s influence on the Intifada of Autumn 2000 (110) and in perceptions of the war in Afghanistan (81ff.). More generally Kepel rightly observes that “since 11 September, both demand and prices have exploded on the satellite dish market…means access to freedom in a world where the regime [in this case the Egyptian] controls information stringently. Satellite television allows freedom of choice” (22). These observations on macro- and micro-levels demonstrate Kepel’s close affinity to the wider field of critical social science, anthropology, and sociology of religion in his unwillingness to reduce complex issues to simple theoretical (and rhetorical) statements. The depiction of internal differences among Muslim groups and movements avoids the gross kind of generalizations so easily found in the massive outpouring of books and articles published post-9/11 by everyone with an even superficial knowledge of Islam and the Middle East. A phenomenon Kepel is intimately aware of in his profound criticism of “instant” media and pop-journalism:

“Some may think that they will have to read the professors’ books and try to understand them. What if they were not wrong after all? So many pages, such small print! How many headaches to look forward to…Here, sirs, no hard feelings: here, for your penance and edification, is this brief travel account.” (90)

No references, but well-informed – Kepel has read the books, no doubt - , it is a fairly balanced narrative with a more solid and contemporary theoretical and methodological perception of the region and its complexity than many Western versions, which are usually brought to light with Bernard Lewis’ old-fashion, Orientalist paradigm as a role-model, building on his and Samuel Huntington’s thesis of Clash of Civilizations (Huntington, 1993) – a thesis ironically often profoundly appreciated by radical Islamists. Kepel’s analysis goes much deeper, even in this short form of narrative, which makes this book a good supplementary reading to his widely read work Jihad - the Trail of Political Islam (2002), and a continued criticism of radical policies on all sides and their failures:

“in our globalized universe, the West exists in Muslim lands, and Muslims live on Western soil. This is not a war of civilizations, but a complex conflict within intertwined civilizations, which are condemned to engage in a permanent cultural dialogue, whatever the Islamists on one hand and the far right on the other hand might say.” (75)

I recommend the book for those in the field of Middle Eastern Studies, who are eager to give a balanced and nuanced introduction to non-academics, or as a book for “The Middle East 101”, but I think that students and scholars alike will find valuable discussions and keen observations, which can be further elaborated in more detailed and substantiated accounts of the conflicts of the Middle East today. This book lays out the framework and main aspects, which have to be taken into account today.

not so bad moon
The tendentious title of this English edition does not quite do justice to a this broad impression of Middle Eastern life and opinions in the months after the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. Kepel collects voices from a variety of backgrounds, interviewing militant activists and talking to secular university students. His style is engaging (though the English translation at a few points reads a bit clumsy) and humorous (as when he identifies the new Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, "democratically elected" heir to his father Hafiz, as a pioneer for Bush jr.). Kepel paints a very spontaneous picture, apparently not worried about accusations of Orientalism, when for instance he describes the sensuality of, even completely veiled, young Arab women.
The volume also includes two brief separate articles, one about a visit to Palestine and Israel before 9/11 and another report about a visit to the USA seven months after the attacks, offering interesting glimpses from the then recent al-Aqsa intifada and into the impact of the New York attacks across the various communities.
Don't be put off by the title, just read the book as a (personal) chronicle.