The Shared Well: A Concise Guide to Relations Between Islam and the West - Softcover

Van De Weyer, Robert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1574886088 ISBN 13: 9781574886085

Publisher: POTOMAC BOOKS, 2003

Synopsis

Shocked by the murderous attacks of September 11th, most Americans remain mystified by the causes of the catastrophe. In concise and elegant prose, distinguished scholar Robert Van de Weyer analyzes the troubled history of the West and its relations with the Islamic world. A pastor and author of more than twenty books about comparative religion, world history, and economics, Van de Weyer is an ideal guide for this journey through our inextricably linked past, present, and future. While not diminishing the horror of past conflicts, he reminds us of the countless ways Islamic and Western cultures have enriched each other. He believes that acknowledging and exploring these crucial intellectual, spiritual, and cultural ties can help us move beyond today's hatred. Hopeful about the future, Van de Weyer describes many ways in which the three billion people of the Islamic and Western cultures can unite to build a more prosperous and harmonious world. With clear and profound insights into history, religion, and economics, The Shared Well is an ideal primer for any reader eager to comprehend the past in order to build a better future. 

About this title

About the Author

Robert Van de Weyer has written or edited more than forty books on religion, history, politics and philosophy. For twenty years, he lectured in political economy at Cambridge and Anglia Universities.

From Booklist

Van de Weyer is a clergyman, and the strength of his book lies in its rehearsal of Islamic-Western relations and its analysis of capitalist globalism, a phenomenon he dates from the eighteenth-century launching of European commercial empires. Van de Weyer saliently recognizes the role of shame, as well as the more frequently noted one of moral outrage, in Islamic reaction to economic imperialism. But the religious underpinning of his prescription (reducible to democracy and freedom of conscience) for resolving Islamic-Western strife may strike many as inadequate and even nihilistic. He suggests that the ideal symbol for a "free and open religion" of peace is "the figure 0," standing for "no beliefs." Still, his brief is a good historical-economical supplement to Roger Scruton's immensely cogent and persuasive The West and the Rest. Ray Olson
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Edition details

• Publisher: POTOMAC BOOKS
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 1574886088
• ISBN 13: 9781574886085
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 132