Faith Misplaced: The Broken Promise of U.S.-Arab Relations: 1820-2001 - Hardcover

Makdisi, Ussama

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1586486802 ISBN 13: 9781586486808

Publisher: PublicAffairs, 2010

Synopsis

In this riveting account of U.S.-Arab relations, award-winning author Ussama Makdisi explores why Arabs once had a favorable view of America and why they no longer do. Firmly rejecting the spurious notion of a civilizational clash between Islam and the West, Makdisi instead demonstrates how an initial zealous American missionary crusade was transformed across the nineteenth-century into a leading American educational presence in the Arab world, and how the advent of the idea of Wilsonian self-determination, amidst wide-scale Arab emigration to the United States, further bolstered a positive, foundational Arab idea of America. However, a series of subsequent political turning points€”beginning with the British and French colonial partition of the Arab world in 1920 and culminating in the U.S.-backed creation of Israel in 1948 at the expense of the Palestinians€”systematically alienated Arabs from America. Drawing on both American and Arab sources, Makdisi brings to

About this title

About the Author:

Ussama Makdisi is Arab American Educational Foundation Professor of History at Rice University. In April 2009 the Carnegie Corporation named Makdisi a 2009 Carnegie Scholar for his contributions to enriching the country's discourse on Islam. His previous book, Artillery of Heaven, won the 2009 John Hope Franklin Prize.

From Booklist:

In Artillery of Heaven (2009), Makdisi challenged simplistic theories of a “clash of civilizations” by examining the largely unsuccessful efforts of American missionaries in the Middle East in the early nineteenth century, paying particular attention to the conversion, suffering, and death of As'ad Shidyaq, the first known Arab to be converted to Protestantism. His latest selection, carefully researched and strongly voiced, opens by revisiting Shidyaq and the missionaries of the 1820s, casting their experience as the first in a long series of increasingly sour U.S.-Arab cultural interactions. It did not have to be this way, Makdisi suggests; goodwill toward Americans, especially in Lebanon and Egypt, was initially substantial enough to overcome even the most dramatic misconceptions and unrealistic expectations. Western-oriented institutions like the American University of Beirut—alma mater of several of Makdisi's ancestors and one of this selection's informal focal points—thrived. And yet certain political acts and omissions, particularly the U.S. decision to align itself closely with Israel (a “betrayal,” in Makdisi's words), have led relations to their current nadir. Yet such animosity is rooted in policy, not cultural clash, and in this there may be cause for guarded optimism. --Brendan Driscoll

About this edition

• Publisher: PublicAffairs
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 1586486802
• ISBN 13: 9781586486808
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 432