Product Description

This volume sets out to reject anti-Islamic views of a future dominated by the conflict between "Islam" and "the West". It has been revised to encompass the events of 11 September 2001, spiralling violence in the Middle East and President George Bush's proposed identification of an "axis of evil". Considering the sources of Islamic militancy and analyzing the confrontational rhetoric of both Islamic and anti-Muslim demagogues, Halliday provides an alternative, critical, but cautious, reassessment. The Middle East, he argues, can be treated neither as a distinct nor as a unified region, but must be seen as a set of disparate societies, facing and reacting to the problems of economic development and political change.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #120865 in Books
• Published on: 2003-01-24
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 264 pages

Review
'The first balanced and sober analysis of the new anti-Islamic tendency... In a detailed and rational exposition of the evidence, Halliday emphasizes the extraordinary diversity of the Islamic world. A brave and important book.' - The Observer Listed as one of The Guardian's top 10 Middle East Books, 6 April 2002 'Fred Halliday's Islam and the Myth of Confrontation should be welcomed by both specialists and non-specialists alike... I would highly recommend the book for undergraduates... it offers many opportunities for spirited debate and alternative constructions of the complexities of the region...a successful and useful contribution to the scholarly literature.' -John Curry, Digest of Middle East Studies

About the Author
Fred Halliday is Professor of International Relations at the LSE, author of many books, including Two Hours that Shook the World.

Customer Reviews

Religion, Politics and Experts in the Middle East
This book was among the essential readings for my course of World History, and frankly I found the chapter about Iran the part worth reading(Khomeini's reign of terror etc) still the author's basic thesis is a flawed one when it comes to the question whether Islam and democracy are incompatible, as he spuriously argues that democracy is possible only with secularism. The ironic thing is that while he says Islamism is a form of nationalism(which of course just like any other form of nationalism is constructed through what have been selected, written, pictured, popularized and repressed by its architects i.e. Mawdudi, Khomeini and Qutb) the issue is that when he speaks about the supposed incompatibility of Islam and democracy, he tends to forget that just as Islamism is constructed ideology, so it is not impossible to reconstruct and reinterpret Islam to fit into the democracy realm. Take the fatwas of Ayatollah Sistani in Iraq as an excellent example of effort.

Another place that I am at odd with Halliday is his portrait of the Gulf War just one kind of a `just war", I was not against pushing Saddam out of Kuwait, nor had the slightest illusion that sanctions will make him back off, but my issue is the belligerent and morally bank corrupt policy of George Bush the father, that favoured and to a great extend helped the dictator to stay in power in the aftermath of the war for another decade. We might have had totally a different situation in Iraq altogether, given that the fact that all the neighboring countries were in favour of removing him from power and the possibility of using the defeated Iraq as a buffer zone, as it has been since 2003, would have been much less likely.

I think that there are better works in the market that shed the light on the resurgent of political Islam. I would particularly recommend Karen Armstrong's The Battle for God.

Excellent work by an intelligent writer
This collection of previously published essays by one of Britain's most original thinkers on the Middle East covers a wide range of topics, from the Iranian revolution to human rights in Islam. One of the best chapters deals with Orientalism and its critics, in which Halliday intelligently tackles both sides of this rather tiresome debate. Throughout, he upholds a belief in the value of approaching the Middle East with the normal standards of social science in mind; he treats it not as some exotic, unchanging terrain, but as a complex region that can be best understood by asking the right questions and looking hard enough for evidence. A breath of fresh air.