Description
Palmer (history, East Carolina U.) surveys American and Middle Eastern history in an effort to demonstrate that terrorism in the region has nothing to do with American foreign policy and is instead something endemic to the Islamic world. He argues that what he calls Islamist Jihadism is the last stand of the traditional world "against the rising tide of modernization, Westernization, and Americanism." In the end, he predicts, Americanism will triumph and the terrorists will prove to represent the "death throes of political Islam." Distributed in the US by Books International. Annotation ©2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
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The United States, argues Michael A. Palmer, is engaged in a political crusade to modernize the Islamic world. Americanism is in the vanguard of modernity’s relentless advance, promoting capitalist markets and democratic institutions. To compete, Islamic societies must adopt a more secular and material approach, as have the West and South and East Asia. But these principles conflict with Islamic fundamentals.Once a vibrant force, much of the Muslim world spent four centuries as prisoner of an Ottoman Empire that embraced feudalism while the West jettisoned it. In the absence of a renaissance or enlightenment, modernization in the Islamic world has been painful and unsuccessful. While many in the West long for an Islamic reformation,” Palmer argues that Islamists such as Osama bin Laden are the face of that reformation. Just as Protestant reformers sought a return to the purity of early Christianity, jihadists desire a return to the halcyon days of conquest and expansion, when the Caliphate controlled a united and powerful Muslim community.American actions have not provoked this conflict, nor can American withdrawal end it, Palmer contends. For example, China, also a once-powerful civilization subjected to Western imperialism, has not produced homicide bombers. Instead, the Chinese are busy modernizing. Islam’s failure to modernize is the root cause of the current situation. Bin Laden and other jihadists understand, correctly, that if Islam is to avoid the materialism and secularism that come with modernity, they must Islamize the West by force.
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