THE WORLD TURNED UP SIDE DOWN-THE MIND OF JIHAD-THE PROPHET - NEW BOOKS

Clash of Identities Explorations in Israeli and Palestinian Societies by Baruch Kimmerling. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008. 429 pp. $55 ($27.50, paper) Reviewed by Steven PlautUniversity of Haifa Middle East Quarterly Fall 2010 http://www.meforum.org/2799/clash-of-identities Send RSS Share: Be the first of your friends to like this. If you are looking for a numbingly unreadable book of anti-Israel diatribes written by a deceased sociologist with Marxist tendencies, you can do no better (or worse?) than Clash of Identities. Kimmerling, who died in 2007, devoted his long career as a sociologist to doing little sociology while preening as a New Historian. Clash of Identities is the reprint of twelve previously published articles venting against Israel and Zionism. Just about everything that was wrong with Kimmerling's work as an academic is on display in this new book, which is long on diatribe but short on evidence. Data and numbers are almost completely missing. Other than a few tables from a questionable public opinion survey, nothing is measured quantitatively in this supposed investigation of identity. Kimmerling seems to have had little interest in measurement and analysis and seemed more interested in preaching and advocating. He saw himself as a historian of the Palestinian people, seeing shades of Palestinian identity decades, even centuries, before the U.N. partition vote of 1947. Ironically, when he actually stumbled across evidence of importance, he tended to ignore what it actually showed. Thus, in describing the birth of Palestinian national identity, he mentions petitions sent to British authorities in the 1920s by thousands of Palestinian intellectuals and professionals, demanding to be made Syrian citizens. This book may be eye-opening for people who have never read a book before about the Middle East. They will learn that both Jewish and Arab identities have something to do with religion, that both nationalist movements have flirted with socialism, and that many Israeli resources go into its military. However, Kimmerling chooses to ignore or hide the fact that the bulk of Palestinians in 1948 were recent migrants or temporary workers who came to the area from other Arab countries attracted by the increase in economic opportunities brought about by Jewish enterprise and British rule of law. The reader will also fail to learn that, until 1967, there was little Palestinian nationalism beyond Arab nationalism or beyond the Arab desire to see the Jews driven into the sea. The most interesting part of the book is its long preface. There we learn that when Kimmerling first approached the dean of Israeli sociology, Shmuel Eisenstadt, to be his dissertation advisor, Eisenstadt turned him down cold because Kimmerling was planning on writing a pro-Arab diatribe as his thesis. Other senior professors at Hebrew University also showed him the door. Eventually he managed to twist the arm of a junior faculty member, Moshe Lissak, to serve as his supervisor. Lissak, who became one of Hebrew University's most distinguished professors also became one of Kimmerling's harshest critics. Related Topics:  Israel, Palestinians  |  Steven Plaut  |  Fall 2010 MEQ Crossing Mandelbaum Gate Coming of Age between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956-1978 by Kai Bird New York: Scribner, 2010. 448 pp. $30 ($10, paper) Reviewed by Mark SilinskyU.S. Department of the Army Middle East Quarterly Fall 2010 http://www.meforum.org/2800/crossing-mandelbaum-gate Send RSS Share: Be the first of your friends to like this. Bird, a Pulitzer-prize winning biographer, has written a semi-autobiographical and semi-historical account of the Middle East that is likely to disappoint many who have enjoyed some of his earlier, much-applauded works. Crossing Mandelbaum Gate reads as a rudderless narrative in search of a clear purpose. Bird spent his high school years in Cairo, son of a U.S. diplomat. Had he limited his account to his personal experiences––a young Westerner describing the passions and idiosyncrasies of the Arab street––his book might have been a good read. A fine writer, he could have captured human dynamics through the prism of a coming-of-age American bystander. Instead, he uses his adolescent reminiscences as a platform to make sweeping and often unsubstantiated statements about national strategies, international law, and political maneuvering. There is, for example, the almost gushing portrayal of Gamal Abdel Nasser, the Egyptian dictator who, despite some sharp political instincts, brought systemic corruption and cronyism to the civil service and led his country to spectacular military failure. In Bird's telling, Nasser is the victim drawn into war by a cabal of Israeli militarists while conceding that blockading the Straits of Tiran could be seen as an act of war or that Nasser's expulsion of U.N .peacekeepers could present challenges to Israeli security. Nonetheless, he places the onus largely on Israel because the war was one of "choice" and not "necessity," terms that he does not define and that he uses arbitrarily and repeatedly in the book. Arab culture, to which he was privy, is criticized sparingly and often apologetically. Saudis are taken to task for not allowing women to drive and, yes, there should be more democratic reforms in Middle Eastern autocracies, but there are no tears for girls and young women murdered in honor killings or outrage at the often-practiced mutilation of female genitals. The minds of Palestinian children, indoctrinated to aspire to homicide bombings as the highest glory possible, are passed over in silence. Claiming to be concerned about his Christian friends in Egypt, he glosses over once-thriving Coptic communities in Egypt, now in decline. His treatment of the mass expulsions of Jews from Middle Eastern Islamic lands is especially perverse and vicious. While detailing the ill-conceived scheme of Israeli defense minister Pinhas Lavon to blow up targets in Egypt and blame the Muslim Brotherhood—an incident that essentially brought down an Israeli government—Bird shamefully uses the affair to vindicate the Egyptian cleansing of its Jews. Crossing Mandelbaum Gate could have been a good book. It held the promises of fine writing and an interesting subject. But the author, previously so skilled with words, never satisfactorily clarifies the purpose of the book. As history, it should have been objective, which it was not. As personal narrative, it should not have masqueraded as political and military history. The reader is left disappointed with the book's shoddy scholarship and polemical tone. Related Topics:  Mark Silinsky  |  Fall 2010 MEQ Decoding the New Taliban Insights from the Afghan Field Edited by Antonio Giustozzi. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009. 420 pp. $32 Reviewed by John WilliamsU.S. Naval Academy Middle East Quarterly Fall 2010 http://www.meforum.org/2801/decoding-the-new-taliban Send RSS Share: Be the first of your friends to like this. In his edited volume, Giustozzi, a fellow at the London School of Economics, has put together a timely and relevant collection of essays that advances the ongoing debate over what he terms the "main war of the early twenty-first century." Based on the firsthand experiences of many of its contributors, which include scholars, journalists, political consultants, and military strategists, Giustozzi provides a broad and varied perspective of Afghanistan and the Neo-Taliban, the next generation Taliban, who have resurged as a result of a prolonged U.S. and Western presence. The majority of the essays address the various provinces in Afghanistan and the complex nature of the relationship between the Neo-Taliban, the regional government, and the local population. Each essay provides a historical perspective on the emergence of the Taliban after the Soviet occupation and a nuanced picture of the nature of the insurgency as it currently exists. As a collection, the essays paint a comprehensive picture of the Neo-Taliban, not as a unified organization but as a combination of disparate groups, which form a loosely coordinated network of criminals and ideologues. Further, by emphasizing command and control, Giustozzi underscores the importance of organizational dynamics and the necessity of understanding the spheres of power and influence in this very traditional society. This is where this book Decoding the New Taliban shines, not necessarily as a prescription for success in the conflict but rather as a collection of essays providing insights into the tribal history, structure, and ongoing dynamics of Afghanistan. Decoding the New Taliban will not be the stuff of neighborhood book clubs: The authors assume the readers have a considerable premise of knowledge about the Neo-Taliban and the geography of Afghanistan. Nevertheless, the volume is instructive. The historical context provided by many of the authors underscores the nature and scope of the threat posed by the Neo-Taliban. More broadly, they explain how contemporary threats are a hybridization of traditional and conventional capabilities. Decoding the New Taliban is a serious and comprehensive collection of essays written by authorities on their subject matter that will directly benefit those who find themselves on the ground with the Afghan people and among the still evolving Neo-Taliban. Related Topics:  Central Asia  |  Fall 2010 MEQ Images of Muhammad Narratives of the Prophet in Islam across the Centuries by Tarif Khalidi New York: Doubleday, 2009. 327 pp. $26 Reviewed by Raymond Ibrahim Middle East Quarterly Fall 2010 http://www.meforum.org/2802/images-of-muhammad Send RSS Share: Be the first of your friends to like this. True to its title, this study by a professor of Islamic studies at the American University of Beirut chronicles the myriad images of Muhammad throughout the ages from the eighth-century biography by Ibn Ishaq to twentieth-century polemics and apologetics. Unfortunately, the book omits the more troubling images, the ones echoed in the behaviors of today's more troubling Muslims. Such an approach has an ancient pedigree: Writing some 1,200 years ago, Ibn Hisham, editor of the earliest biography of Muhammad, admitted honestly that he omitted "things which it is disgraceful to discuss; matters which would distress certain people." Khalidi follows the same pattern—though without Hisham's candid disclaimer. It is not that Khalidi does not acknowledge that negative images exist; he just shies from recounting the most notorious. Thus, while the reader will encounter Muhammad the commander, the lawgiver, the ethicist, even the Sufi mystic, images of Muhammad as war-monger, highway-bandit, misogynist, and assassin are lacking. For example, the worst image Khalidi presents of Muhammad involves his killing an enemy combatant even though the latter begged for clemency. One would have thought Muhammad's assassination of poets by deceit and other means—including one old woman, Umm Qirfa, whose body was rent in half[1]—calls for equal mention. Objectively speaking, such less than inspiring images deserve more prominence. After all, when pious believers pass down anecdotes that may reflect negatively on their prophet, it seems only reasonable to treat these, especially in comparison to the numerous praiseworthy images, as important factors of the Muhammad persona. Ultimately, however, the book is useful in that it implicitly demonstrates how the concept of sunna (a model of Muslim behavior based on the sayings, customs, and actions of Muhammad) is impractical. For when one compares the many pictures of the prophet, discrepancies abound: Muhammad loves peace except when he wages war; he hates poetry but also enjoys it; he bans the killing of women and children except when they get in the way; he condemns foul speech but tells people to "bite their father's penis." Sunna, then, becomes a divine sanction for any given Muslim to follow his proclivities—provided an applicable image of Muhammad can be found. And, as Khalidi's book shows, images of the prophet appear endless. [1] I. Ishaq and A. Guillaume, The Life of Muhammad (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 665. Related Topics:  History, Islam  |  Raymond Ibrahim  |  Fall 2010 MEQ Immortal: A Military History of Iran and its Armed Forces by Steven R. Ward Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2009. 361 pp. $27.95 Reviewed by Patrick Clawson Middle East Quarterly Fall 2010 http://www.meforum.org/2803/immortal-military-history-iran-armed-forces Send RSS Share: Be the first of your friends to like this. Iran has had more than its share of wars; its history can, to a large extent, be understood by studying the military operations on its soil. With only brief interludes, Iranian leaders during the last century have seen the military as the centerpiece of their rule. That was as true of Reza Shah Pahlavi (r. 1921-41) and his son as of the Islamic Republic, which uses its Pasdaran, or Revolutionary Guard, to maintain its iron grip on the country. CIA analyst Ward provides detailed accounts of the grand martial dreams envisaged by these regimes—dreams that came crashing down in costly failure. When Iraqi forces unilaterally withdrew from Iranian soil in 1982, for example, the Islamic Republic could have ended the war with Iraq on terms no worse—arguably better—than what it was offered in 1988. By fighting on, the Islamic Republic lost about 200,000 citizens and exhausted its people, who no longer were prepared to sacrifice for the revolutionary cause. Ward skillfully illustrates how the Islamic Republic in many important ways continues the millennia-long trends of its forebears. He recalls historian Sir Percy Sykes's comment that the ancient Sassanians, the last pre-Islamic Persian empire, "consider[ed] the altar and throne as inseparable," pointing to its continuing relevance to many Iranian regimes, especially today's mullocracy. Another theme is the eventual intervention of the military in political affairs, seen once more in the Revolutionary Guard's assertion of greater control at the expense of clerics and elected leaders. Finally, he observes that few Iranian regimes have done well in incorporating state-of-the-art technology in an effective manner, noting the dangers for the Islamic Republic in its reliance on a small inventory of uncertain missiles and weapons of mass destruction, which among other things, invite preemptive attack. Most striking is the same pattern displayed in the 1980-88 war with Iraq: Dedicated, self-sacrificing Iranian soldiers undercut by poor leadership, stingy support, and outright maltreatment at the hands of rulers who took a cavalier attitude toward their soldiers' sacrifices. It would behoove today's military planners to absorb these important lessons from the past as they prepare for current contingencies. If the lessons of the past hold, the ordinary Iranian soldier will perform valiantly and the Iranian commanders will be not especially competent or caring about their men. Related Topics:  History, Iran  |  Patrick Clawson  |  Fall 2010 MEQ Inside Egypt The Land of the Pharaohs on the Brink of a Revolution by John R. Bradley New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. 256 pp. $24.95 ($16.95, paper) Reviewed by Raymond Ibrahim Middle East Quarterly Fall 2010 http://www.meforum.org/2804/inside-egypt Send RSS Share: Be the first of your friends to like this. To the general reader, Inside Egypt is a good introduction to some of the problems rife in the most populous, Arabic-speaking country. From regime corruption and oppression, to widespread poverty and discontent, to human rights abuses and the plight of Egypt's minorities, most of the important issues are here. Bradley, formerly a Middle-East-based foreign correspondent, also provides useful insights, such as how the current regime exploits the West's fear of the Muslim Brotherhood to its advantage. Unfortunately, there is a myopic tendency to view nearly every problem in Egypt as a byproduct of Husni Mubarak, Egypt's president since 1981, and in Bradley's view, the "most corrupt offender of them all." Even things one might have supposed were products of time or chance—from the condition of Egypt's Bedouin, who have led the same desperate lifestyle for centuries, to the radicalization of Muslims, a worldwide phenomenon—are somehow traced back to Mubarak. While the Mubarak regime is responsible for many of Egypt's woes, blaming all of the nation's problems on it is misleading. By minimizing the Islamization of society and the influence of the Brotherhood, which the author claims "has made only limited inroads into the mainstream" since Egypt's Muslims are "intolerant of extremist Sunni doctrine," Bradley moves from fact-based evidence to conjecture and, perhaps, wishful thinking. Indeed, this is the book's chief problem. Bradley is convinced that, given a chance, through the elimination of Mubarak, Egyptians would create a liberal, egalitarian, and gender-neutral society. This tendency to project things that are important to the author (though often not to Egyptians) is highlighted by his fixation on homosexuality in Egypt. The topic permeates the entire book, including a rather out-of-place section recounting the in-and-outs of Western gay tourism in Luxor. In short, while the book is a good primer for novices to Egypt's culture and politics, the author's own proclivities mar his objectivity. While he is convinced that Egypt is a byproduct of Mubarak, one is left wondering instead whether Mubarak is a byproduct of Egypt. Related Topics:  Egypt  |  Raymond Ibrahim  |  Fall 2010 MEQ Iran with Nuclear Weapons Anticipating the Consequences for U.S. Policy by Jacquelyn K. Davis and Robert L. Pfaltzgraff Jr. Cambridge: Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, 2008. 111 pp. Free download. Reviewed by Ilan BermanAmerican Foreign Policy Council Middle East Quarterly Fall 2010 http://www.meforum.org/2805/iran-with-nuclear-weapons Send RSS Share: Be the first of your friends to like this. Iran with Nuclear Weapons is an indispensable contribution to the discussion that should be taking place about Tehran's nuclear program and its logical endpoint: What might happen following the acquisition of an offensive nuclear capability by Iran, and how is the Iranian regime likely to behave as a result? Through the use of three distinct behavioral models, Davis and Pfaltzgraff—respectively the executive vice president and president of the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis—analyze how an Iran with nuclear weapons is likely to behave under adverse internal conditions (such as those that have prevailed since the country's fraudulent elections in June 2009); how a consolidated regime in Tehran might wield its nuclear deterrent; and how such an entity would weather external challenges to its regional position. What emerges is a sophisticated analysis predicated upon the idea of "alternative futures"—the understanding that Iran's behavior can and will be shaped in a number of different directions by the confluence of domestic and international drivers. Through their meticulous, well researched, and logically reasoned analysis, Davis and Pfaltzgraff methodically map out a range of conceivable scenarios involving a nuclear, or nuclear-ready, Iran. Thus, they note that a "defensive" Iran, unsure of its international status, is likely to use its nascent nuclear capability to deter the United States from attempting regime change and Israel from employing military action against its nuclear facilities. An "aggressive Iran," by contrast, would employ its atomic arsenal to expand its regional influence, empower terrorist proxies, and decisively alter the regional correlation of strategic forces. Finally, in the event of an unstable Iran—one buffeted by protracted regime instability—control of Iran's nuclear capabilities is likely to emerge as a key domestic contest between competing political factions. Such analysis has been sorely needed. By focusing overwhelmingly on Iran's effort to acquire a nuclear capability, scholars and academics alike have consciously chosen not to think about the unthinkable—that the Islamic Republic might actually succeed in getting the bomb. Davis and Pfaltzgraff have, and their assessment of potential Iranian behavior is likely to prove invaluable to U.S. national security decision-makers who should be thinking about the "day after" Iran goes nuclear, and what it will mean for U.S. policy. That day, after all, appears to be fast approaching. Related Topics:  Iran  |  Ilan Berman  |  Fall 2010 MEQ The Mind of Jihad by Laurent Murawiec New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. 342 pp. $83.99 ($25.99, paper) Reviewed by Stephen SchwartzCenter for Islamic Pluralism Middle East Quarterly Fall 2010 http://www.meforum.org/2806/the-mind-of-jihad Send RSS Share: Be the first of your friends to like this. Murawiec (1951-2009), who at his death was a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, was praised by his colleagues as a "big thinker." The Mind of Jihad, commissioned by the Office of Net Assessment of the U.S. Defense Department, represents an effort at a general, historical theory of present-day jihadism. Murawiec was not alone in seeing the influence of the Western radical left on contemporary jihadism. In addition, he found parallels between the current radical Islamist challenge and the millenarian extremism that erupted in Christian Europe during the late medieval and early Reformation periods. "Sectarian eschatological movements tend to breed behaviors of a similar nature," he argued, and habits of war in Islam have "morphed in modern times into a compound of Gnostic cult, tribal outlook, Islamic jihad, and Bolshevik terror." But although Murawiec read widely, his catalogue of parallels between today's jihadists and past perpetrators of ideological violence seems tenuous in its linkages and emphases. For example, Raymond Ibrahim correctly asked in his review in The Weekly Standard,[1] "why does Murawiec insist on examining jihad[ists] through Christian paradigms and precedents when Islam itself affords plenty of both?" Ibrahim specifically mentioned the Kharijites, an early extremist branch of Islam, which terrorized fellow Muslims; Muslim moderates, in fact, often equate al-Qaeda and similar groups with the Kharijites. But the Kharijites merit only passing notice in The Mind of Jihad. Murawiec argued for a link between the various Gnostic groups of antiquity, with their beliefs in esoteric doctrines revealed solely to an enlightened elite, with the modern Marxist movement. This line, between nearly all the revolutionary movements in the histories of Christendom, Islam, and modern Europe, smacks more of popular conspiratorial volumes, such as The DaVinci Code, than a serious treatment of jihad. The Mind of Jihad brings together many complex strands of history but in an excessively synthetic manner that provokes more questions than answers. It is a tribute to its author's dedication and depth of research, but his focus on social radicalism as a universal problem, rather than on Islamist ideology as a particular element of Muslim life today, makes this book more a curiosity than a reliable contribution. In his fascination with the Gnostics, Murawiec appears to have been carried away with a "secret" interpretation of recent history, much of which, even when it appears obscured, lies in plain sight. [1] Jan. 26, 2009. Related Topics:  History, Radical Islam  |  Stephen Schwartz  |  Fall 2010 MEQ Muslim Communities of Grace The Sufi Brotherhoods in Islamic Religious Life by Jamil M. Abun-Nasr New York: Columbia University Press, 2007. 280 pp. $30 Reviewed by Stephen Schwartz Middle East Quarterly Fall 2010 http://www.meforum.org/2807/muslim-communities-of-grace Send RSS Share: Be the first of your friends to like this. Abun-Nasr, emeritus professor of Islamic studies at the University of Bayreuth, Germany, has produced a substantial body of work on the history of the Maghreb including a previous volume on the Tijaniya, a powerful Sufi spiritual community in that region. Regrettably, the author allows his prejudices and predilections to undermine what could have been an important work on Sufi brotherhoods. Additionally, he gives little attention to Shiite Sufism and passes somewhat coolly over the Sufi tariqat (spiritual community), named for Jalal-ad-Din Rumi (d. 1273), a particularly strange omission given that Rumi is now perhaps the most famous Sufi in the world, among non-Muslims no less than Muslims. In his analysis, Abun-Nasr makes three main points. First, Sufi "communities of grace" owe their religious authority and authenticity to the baraka or divine blessings of the sheikh (teacher). Second, the original understanding of the tariqa (path) of the individual spiritual seeker came by the thirteenth century to be identified with the specific direction of a particular sheikh. Finally, he contends that by the eighteenth century, the tariqats were transformed into more exclusive "brotherhoods" in which membership was made dependent on a pledge to the sheikh. This view of the development of Sufism embodies a process by which spiritual authority is increasingly centralized in the sheikh and which conforms to conservative Islamic norms, an evolution that the author takes no pains to conceal he supports. Abun-Nasr's analysis of Sufi brotherhoods is bolstered by the presentation of many essential aspects of Sufism but much is also absent and, worse, spoiled by his biases. Thus, in discussing the dissident manners and utterances of the early, and among Sufis, beloved figure of Abu Mansur Hussein al-Hallaj, Abun-Nasr identifies himself with the sheikh's critics, stating that he "blatantly breached the doctrinal limits of Islamic orthodoxy." Hallaj, a Baghdadi Sufi, was executed for alleged apostasy in 922, a deeply traumatic event in Islamic history. Most Sufis condemn the execution as unjust as they believe his "heretical" self-identification with divine truth was evidence of an ecstatic state rather than a rational denial of the uniqueness of God. To revive an orthodox condemnation of Hallaj, in such harsh terms, appears as a gratuitous reiteration of doctrinal intolerance. Muslim Communities of Grace comprises historical sketches of Sufi orders the author describes as the "Tariqas of the Islamic heartland" but which really means those affirming a narrow view of Islamic practice. As a result, Abun-Nasr effectively dismisses the significance of the ecstatic Sufi schools, such as the Mawlawiya inspired by Rumi, and the Rifa'iya originating in southern Iraq, despite their being widespread today. The book provides a detailed and provocative counterpoint to many other works on Sufism. Nevertheless, those acquainted with the broader history of Sufism will recognize in this work a polemic intended to draw Muslims followers of the powerful Sufi tradition back along the path of narrowly regulated authority and practice. Related Topics:  History, Islam  |  Stephen Schwartz  |  Fall 2010 MEQ Qaddafi's Libya in World Politics by Yehudit Ronen Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2008. 243 pp. $55 Reviewed by Mohamed DaadaouiOklahoma City University Middle East Quarterly Fall 2010 http://www.meforum.org/2808/qaddafi-libya-in-world-politics Send RSS Share: Be the first of your friends to like this. Ronen of the Moshe Dayan Center has produced an ambitious though incomplete review of Mu'ammar al-Qadhafi and the Libya government's conduct in international affairs. She begins with a history of Qadhafi's attempts to position himself as a Nasserite, pan-Arab, anti-imperialist through his rhetoric against the United States and its chief ally in the Middle East, Israel. His success at securing the withdrawal of U.S. forces from an air base near Tripoli and his nationalization of the oil sector (and other formerly foreign-owned concerns) made Qadhafi a household name in the Arab world. However, his attempts at pan-Arab discourse resulted in two ill-fated unions, first with Sudan and then with Egypt and Syria. Libya's support for the POLISARIO Front in the Western Sahara conflict strained its relations with Morocco. Qadhafi also sharply criticized his fellow Arab leaders over their stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the emerging Iraqi crisis. Increasingly marginalized because of his outspoken opinions and under the strain of economic sanctions, Qadhafi sought a new platform for his regional aspirations, abandoning pan-Arabism and embracing a pan-African approach to Libyan foreign policy. Ronen engages the reader in a thorough analysis of Libya's costly and failed military interventions in Uganda and Chad, arguing that Libya's approach in both theaters highlighted the limits of its military power. Qadhafi has recently signaled a shift to a more conciliatory approach by hosting African summits and peacemaking initiatives to end fighting in Congo and Sierra Leone. The strength of Ronen's Qaddafi's Libya in World Politics lies in its rich analysis of Qadhafi's shifting foreign policy initiatives and its highlighting of the various domestic factors behind his political longevity. However, gaps lie in a scant analysis of inter-Maghreb politics or of Libya's relations with Europe. Equally disappointing is her neglect of a sustained look into the future trajectory of the Libyan regime's foreign policy. Despite these shortcomings, Ronen's Qaddafi's Libya in World Politics is recommended for courses on the Middle East and North Africa. Related Topics:  Libya  |  Fall 2010 MEQ The World Turned Upside Down The Global Battle over God, Truth, and Power by Melanie Phillips New York: Encounter Books, 2010. 280 pp. $23.95 Reviewed by Mark Silinsky Middle East Quarterly Fall 2010 http://www.meforum.org/2809/the-world-turned-upside-down Send RSS Share: Be the first of your friends to like this. Phillips, author of Londonistan,[1] has produced another book that underscores the threat that aggressive, political Islam poses to Western civilization, to the security of Israel, and to non-Muslims in Islamic lands. The scope of The World Turned Upside Down is ambitious, tackling Western pacifism and fatalism, political Islam, anti-Semitism, the dimming of the Enlightenment, Marxism, and even creationism. Phillips is outspoken about the naiveté of Western intellectuals toward the ascent of Islamism in Europe. Her book explores the battle of ideas between advocates for Islam and their secular opponents, the international criminalization of Israel, and the leftist-Islamic alliance in building a Muslim proletariat. It also touches on the decimation of the few remaining pockets of Christianity in the Middle East. Phillips sometimes trains her sights erratically, taking aim at relatively harmless targets. The author has sarcastic fun with the handful of Hollywood celebrities who have been exploring, if only superficially, the secrets of Jewish mysticism, but what harm has Madonna, a well meaning though not overly educated chanteuse, done to Judaism, or to the West, or to anything else? There is also something schoolmarmish about passages in which she takes the West to task for its insufficient religious piety, gratuitously alienating secular readers. The World Turned Upside Down is informative but a slower read than Londonistan, perhaps because of its broader focus, perhaps because the author clearly did her homework: Each of the chapters is fully footnoted with an average of forty-five to fifty citations. These shortcomings aside, Phillips's book shines with her intellectual integrity. A conservative who left the trendy leftism of her 1960s youth, she is an English Jew who refuses to take refuge in anti-Zionism to prove her independent credentials. For these and other reasons, Phillips is largely an outsider in European intellectual circles. [1] See "Brief Reviews, Londonistan," Middle East Quarterly, Fall 2007, p. 83. Related Topics:  Muslims in the West  |  Mark Silinsky  |  Fall 2010 MEQ To receive the full, printed version of the Middle East Quarterly, please see details about an affordable subscription. 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