Islam and the myth of confrontation : religion and politics in the Middle East

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.

Author Notes

Fred Halliday is Professor of International Relations at the LSE.

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Halliday, a distinguished British scholar of the Arab world and author of several important books on the area (including Revolution and Foreign Policy, CH, Oct'90, on South Yemen, and Arabia without Sultans, CH, Dec'75), here examines the current tendency to view with alarm the recent "Islamic resurgence" in the Middle East, a vogue fueled as much by the Iranian revolution and Islamist activity in a number of Arab countries, as by a literature that portrays it as a threat to the West and its interests. This "myth of confrontation," he argues, is a product both of a failure in the West to understand and appreciate the complex cultural and political forces at work in the region, and of the effort of Middle Eastern leaders and intellectuals to exaggerate the importance and consequences of those same forces. Since he exposes the underlying self-interest and power-seeking on both sides, his book, he suggests, should "be equally unwelcome by both groups of people." John Esposito's The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality? (CH, Mar'93) deals with the same theme and comes to much the same conclusions, but lacks the sophistication of Halliday's contrapuntal argument. Highly recommended to all audiences. V. T. Le Vine Washington University

Acknowledgements	p. v
Preface to Second Edition	p. vii
Introduction	p. 1
Part 1 Interpreting the Middle East
1 The Middle East and International Politics	p. 11
2 The Iranian Revolution in Comparative Perspective	p. 42
3 The Gulf War, 1990-91	p. 76
Part 2 Myths of Confrontation
4 Islam and the West: 'Threat of Islam' or 'Threat to Islam'?	p. 107
5 Human Rights and the Islamic Middle East: Universalism and Relativism	p. 133
6 Anti-Muslimism and Contemporary Politics: One Ideology or Many?	p. 160
7 Conclusion: 'Orientalism' and its Critics	p. 195
Notes	p. 218
Index	p. 249

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Author Notes

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