Confronting Political Islam: Six Lessons from the West's Past

Owen IV, John M.

ISBN 10: 0691163146 / ISBN 13: 9780691163147

Published by Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2015

About this Item

Octavo. Light brown cloth covered boards and spine with bright red lettering on the spine. Book has light bumping at the head of the spine and a nearly unnoticable bump at the tail. Red endpapers. Binding is straight and tight. Pages are all clean, white, and crisp. 216 pages. Dust Jacket - has a trace of rubbing at the very tip of the upper front outside corner - jacket is otherwsie clean, bright, and sharp.

Seller Inventory # 009899

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Confronting Political Islam: Six Lessons from the West's Past
• Publisher: Princeton University Press, Princeton
• Publication Date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0691163146
• ISBN 13: 9780691163147
• Binding: Hard Cover
• Edition: First Edition, First Printing.
• Condition: NF
• Dust Jacket Condition: NF
• Seller catalogs:
  • Religious Studies
  • History

About this title

Synopsis

How the conflicts of Western history shed light on current upheavals in the Middle East

Political Islam has often been compared to ideological movements of the past such as fascism or Christian theocracy. But are such analogies valid? How should the Western world today respond to the challenges of political Islam? Taking an original approach to answer this question, Confronting Political Islam compares Islamism's struggle with secularism to other prolonged ideological clashes in Western history. By examining the past conflicts that have torn Europe and the Americas―and how they have been supported by underground networks, fomented radicalism and revolution, and triggered foreign interventions and international conflicts―John Owen draws six major lessons to demonstrate that much of what we think about political Islam is wrong.

Owen focuses on the origins and dynamics of twentieth-century struggles among Communism, Fascism, and liberal democracy; the late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century contests between monarchism and republicanism; and the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century wars of religion between Catholics, Lutherans, Calvinists, and others. Owen then applies principles learned from the successes and mistakes of governments during these conflicts to the contemporary debates embroiling the Middle East. He concludes that ideological struggles last longer than most people presume; ideologies are not monolithic; foreign interventions are the norm; a state may be both rational and ideological; an ideology wins when states that exemplify it outperform other states across a range of measures; and the ideology that wins may be a surprise.

Looking at the history of the Western world itself and the fraught questions over how societies should be ordered, Confronting Political Islam upends some of the conventional wisdom about the current upheavals in the Muslim world.

About the Author

John M. Owen IV is professor of politics and a faculty fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia. His books include The Clash of Ideas in World Politics (Princeton) and Liberal Peace, Liberal War.