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The War For Muslim Minds
Islam And The West
by Gilles Kepel
The United States' Middle East policy is analyzed by Gilles Kepel, a professor at the Institute for Political Studies in Paris.
Belknap Press, 336 pages
09/21/2004
$23.95
ISBN: 0674015754
Nonfiction
Current Events & Politics
All reviews are classified as one of five grades: Outstanding (4 points), Favorable (3), Mixed (2), Unfavorable (1) and Terrible (0). To calculate the Metascore, we divide total points achieved by the total points possible (i.e., 4 x the number of reviews), with the resulting percentage (multiplied by 100) being the Metascore. Learn more...
The Guardian William Dalrymple
This concise, engaging and authoritative book should be required reading for anyone wishing to understand what is happening in the Islamic world and the terrifyingly counter-productive nature of our response to it.
The Independent Michael Church
[Kepel's] analysis of how Egyptian and Saudi strains of radical Islam fused to create a virulent new cocktail is detailed and persuasive, as is his X-ray view of the Saudi state.
The Economist
Mr Kepel ends on an unexpectedly upbeat note. It is possible, the author suggests, that European Islam might evolve in new ways that could co-exist with modernity, asserting its distinctiveness without pretending, dishonestly, to live in another century.
The Globe And Mail [Toronto] Nader Hashemi
Written with compassion, sympathy and critical acumen, and provide[s] new insight into the changing world of Islam-West relations. [20 Nov 2004, p.D16]
Christian Science Monitor Thomas D'Evelyn
Easy to read (no footnotes but a good bibliography for each chapter), this persuasive book challenges the American perspective on the war on terror and, more important reveals the rich complexity of contemporary Islam.
Wall Street Journal Ian Johnson
[Kepel] rightly criticizes France's political parties for not putting forward prominent Muslim candidates and for setting up instead a quasi-colonialistic "council" to represent the country's Muslim newcomers.
New York Review Of Books Max Rodenbeck
While all these authors call attention to the central importance of Palestine to the jihadists' creed, Gilles Kepel makes especially explicit how the issue has fueled al-Qaeda's fires.
London Review Of Books Lawrence Rosen
Like them or not, the voices in Kepel’s account have an authenticity that keeps his story firmly grounded while allowing a reader to consider alternative ways of interpreting the same material. [4 Aug 2005]
Atlantic Monthly Peter Beinart
An odd book. It is clearly the product of deep learning; Kepel knows Islamism well enough to see distinctions where most commentators see only uniformity... Yet amid this intricate history and fascinating micro-sociology are bizarre, unsupported assertions—for example, that the largely Jewish neo-cons in the Bush administration identify with Shiites partly because their ayatollahs remind the neo-cons of rabbis.
Washington Post Daniel Benjamin
[Kepel] makes scant effort to pull it all together and assess whether the U.S.-led campaign is diminishing the appeal of bin Laden's ideology or whether, as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld wondered in a leaked memo, this is a case in which "the harder we work, the behinder we get."
Daily Telegraph Amir Taheri
Kepel offers an alternative to the failed American strategy [which] goes "beyond bin Laden and Bush" - who are, by implication, in positions of moral equivalence - and aims to create the "New Andalusia", a 21st-century version of what Kepel imagines Spain to have been under Muslim rule, this time in the whole of the European Union. Kepel does not say who will rule but waxes lyrical about his Islamo-Christian Utopia... Any takers?
New York Observer Fred Siegel
It would take a far longer book than Mr. Kepel has written to unravel all his errors of fact and chronology... Did the editors at Harvard University Press actually read this manuscript? [22 Nov 2004, p.12]
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