MSNBC – Author imagines a ‘World Without Islam’

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1. 

   Hena Zuberi

   November 1, 2010 at 3:48 PM

   Los Angeles Times Book Review

   Little, Brown: 336 pp., $25.99

   One of the sadder consequences of the near decade of war and violence that has followed the attacks of 9/11 is that so many people are convinced that we are in a clash of civilizations divided along religious fault lines. The concept was popularized by Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington in the mid-1990s, but he didn’t invent the idea; he gave it a name. Until 9/11, however, it was both debated and debatable. Since then, it has become a mainstream view in both the Western world and the Muslim world. The recent furor over the proposed Muslim center in Lower Manhattan, the rise of anti-Muslim rhetoric in Europe and the continued attraction of radical antinomian Islam in parts of the Muslim world attest to this situation.

   But Graham Fuller offers a forceful, erudite reminder that neither Islam nor religious fervor adequately explains the animosity between parts of the Muslim world and the United States. In fact, he posits that the fissures that currently exist might well have existed even if Islam never had, and he offers a wide-ranging, at times digressive but always illuminating look at the past centuries to support that contention.

   For years, Fuller has been a voice of reason and calm in an otherwise hysterical debate about the root causes of the contemporary logjam. He does not apologize for terrorism or violence in the name of God, but he has been consistently critical of the myopia of Americans about their own role in feeding the current hostility. And with a pedigree that includes years in high-level positions in the CIA, his critiques should carry unusual weight.

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