A Fury for God: The Islamist Attack on America - Softcover

Ruthven, Malise

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1862075409 ISBN 13: 9781862075405

Publisher: Granta Books, 2002

Synopsis

In A FURY FOR GOD, Malise Ruthven, a renowned scholar of Islamic history and Middle Eastern affairs, traces the religious and intellectual background behind the terrorist attacks on the United States. They were carried out, he argues, by men steeped in "Islamist" ideology: an amalgam of traditional Islamic concepts such as "jihad" and extremist ideas adapted from European leftism, fascism, and anarchism.

Ruthven investigates the hijackers' motives, particularly those of their leader, Mohammed Atta--a figure troubled, like many of his contemporaries, by the clash between Islamic and Western values, including unresolved conflicts over gender and sexuality. It would be a mistake, Ruthven insists, to treat these men as medieval fanatics: their attitude to modernity is dangerous and ambivalent.

In a challenging analysis, the author exposes the crucial importance of the Saudi Arabian connection: it is an authoritarian regime responsible for the massive sponsorship of "fundamentalism"; the birthplace of Osama bin Laden; and the home of fifteen of the hijackers. At the same time, Saudi Arabia remains America's closest ally in the Arab world, armed and tolerated for its oil. Though Ruthven rejects the thesis that the Western and Islamic worlds are heading inevitably for a clash between "civilizations," he concludes by suggesting that if left unchecked, pressures from religious fundamentalists (both Christian and Jewish) in the United States and Israel, added to the religious forces at work in the Muslim world, might wellc onspire to produce just such an outcome.

About this title

About the Author

Malise Ruthven is the author of the highly acclaimed Islam in the World and Islam: A Very Short Introduction. A former writer with the BBC,. he has also written for the Times Literary Supplement and the Guardian, and is currently a visiting professor at the University of California, San Diego.

From the Inside Flap

"Malise Ruthven has a long-established reputation as an expert on the Muslim world, but he has also worked on the politics of religion in the USA. The result is this very informative, learned, and incisive book that deals with both sides of the story. . . .If you want an informed analysis of where Bin Laden and his supporters come from, and of what fuels their determination, this is the book to read." --Fred Halliday, The Evening Standard, Monday July 17 2002

"Malise Ruthven's excellent book is possibly the most balanced synthesis yet published on the rise of militant Islam. . .It is bubbling with ideas and is a perfect primer for anyone wishing a clear overview of the subject." William Dalrymple, The Sunday Times

Reviews

Much in this book will, as the author admits, be familiar, the events of September 11, the idea of jihad, but former BBC journalist and scholar Ruthven is worth reading for the occasional stunning insight he offers into the psychology underlying terrorism by drawing on less well-known scholarship. He asserts, for instance, that the motivations of suicide attackers are not naive faith or "Islamic heroism, but... "Nietzschean despair" a frustration with the world's refusal to conform to the right path laid down by God.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Granta Books
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1862075409
• ISBN 13: 9781862075405
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 324