A World Without Islam - Hardcover

Fuller, Graham E.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 031604119X ISBN 13: 9780316041195

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company, 2010

Synopsis

What if Islam never existed? To some, it's a comforting thought: no clash of civilizations, no holy wars, no terrorists.

But what if that weren't the case at all? In A WORLD WITHOUT ISLAM, Graham E. Fuller guides us along an illuminating journey through history, geopolitics, and religion to investigate whether or not Islam is indeed the cause of some of today's most emotional and important international crises. Fuller takes us from the birth of Islam to the fall of Rome to the rise and collapse of the Ottoman Empire. He examines and analyzes the roots of terrorism, the conflict in Israel, and the role of Islam in supporting and energizing the anti-imperial struggle. Provocatively, he finds that contrary to the claims of many politicians, thinkers, theologians, and soldiers, a world without Islam might not look vastly different from what we know today.

Filled with fascinating details and counterintuitive conclusions, A WORLD WITHOUT ISLAM is certain to inspire debate and reshape the way we think about Islam's relationship with the West.

About this title

About the Author:

Graham E. Fuller is a former vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council at the CIA, in charge of long-range strategic forecasting. He is an adjunct professor of history at Simon Fraser University and the author of numerous books about the Middle East.

From Booklist:

*Starred Review* Challenging commentators who regard Islam as the seedbed of anti-Western terrorism, Fuller argues that the perilous tensions between the West and the Middle East spring from nonreligious sources, not Islamic theology. Fuller defends his provocative thesis by showing that long before Muhammad, the peoples of the Middle East viewed the Western powers as interlopers. Readers explore, in particular, the ways the eleventh- and twelfth-century Christian crusaders against Islam were replaying scripts written by Roman Catholic authorities, who suppressed heresies in the Levant and then waged doctrinal war against the patriarchs of Eastern Orthodoxy. The persistence of pre-Islamic resentments surfaces most tellingly in the willingness of Catholic crusaders to ignore the Muslims long enough to sack the Christian (but Eastern Orthodox) city of Constantinople for political and economic reasons. These reasons for regional conflict continued, as Fuller illustrates, after the Protestants’ revolt and Russia’s emergence as a new Byzantium. Fuller thus dares to suggest that overcoming the twenty-first-century anti-Western animosities of Middle Eastern Muslims requires an honest and historically informed assessment of economic and political inequities that moves us beyond a fixation on religious issues. This exceptional inquiry finally sustains a quite specific—and controversial—set of recommendations for reframing American foreign policy. --Bryce Christensen

About this edition

• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 031604119X
• ISBN 13: 9780316041195
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336