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His weaved narrative targets his intended market 2010-02-27

Reviewer: MARTEL THE HAMMER

Aslan has cherry picked history to support the popular Muslim narrative of today, which is "we are oppressed and humiliated and therefore justified in our violent actions". The book is peppered with the words like oppression, humiliation, grievance, marginalized, etc... and he refers to what "Western" powers have done to the victimized and oppressed Muslims of the world. Even when they are oppressed by Muslim leaders it is somehow the fault of the west. All this plays neatly into chapter 22 verse 39 of the Quran which says that only the oppressed can wage jihad. He does mix this with some praise for the West as when he is talking about Condoleeza Rice and democratic elections in Egypt, but, it is quickly taken away when he complains of the U.S.'s inaction when Egypt's Mubarack clamps down and stops the fledgling democratic process. What is the U.S. supposed to do about Egypts internal affairs? He heaps praise on Obama and his future promise and opportunity. He also reaches way back in history to bring up the zealots of the bible, meanwhile he breezes right across the 120 years of bloody Muslim expansionaist conquest from 632A.D. to 750A.D. and spends an inordinate amount of time on the crusades neglecting to mention the constant Ottoman incursions into the Balkans up to Vienna and the raiding of european caravans to Jerusalem. He spends some time trying to determine why young Muslim men aged 15 to 25 are attracted to jihadism, but, never mentions the point that this is when adolescents are searching for an identity. The fact that a Muslim oppression narrative exists is enough to attract those who feel like outsiders. Although, he tries to give some shred of legitimacy by attaching it to the Liberation theology of latin american priests of the 1970's and 80's. I was hoping for some depth and insight and did not get any, very disappointing. All I got was "hey, look back at these guy's in history and the jihadists are like them". He may have a mild case of Westernophobia and I'm sure his subtle innuendo will inluence many to hold on tight to their oppression narrative. He bad mouths several other authors as being pseudo-intellectuals, but, what is he? With regard to the Jihadists today it would be wise for us to remember what the South Vietnamese used to say about the North Vietnamese communists "Do not listen to what they say, look at what they do!"

Well informed and explain 2010-02-15

Reviewer: Fran

Those a good job in explaining a lot of things about the ongoing situation in the Middle East and Europe, mostly, Al qaida and its wanna be's. Although, most is conventional wisdom to does who studied this most thoroughly. For new comers, and those who want to understand without bias it worth reading.

Cosmic War 2010-01-17

Reviewer: Margaret Magnus

So unlike what most of the detractors here claim, this book is not an apology for terrorism. Its essential point, as the the title suggests, is that if we accept the battle as defined by the Jihadists -- as a cosmic war-- then it is unwinnable, and pursuing it on those terms will inevitably distance us from the Muslim world.

My sense is that Aslan's most fundamental allegiance is to the Muslim world, which he would like to see become democratic, but that he genuinely believes in the American dream as well and wants to be one with it. He is doing his best to make a positive contribution toward a better world by describing the world through his eyes, and he is not stupid. His description of the young jihadist mindset as acting out of misguided love rather than hate - was subtle, accurate and brave, and a real contribution to the discussion. He does a good job of explaining the difference between Jihadists vs. Islamists, and why we fail to understand the dynamic between them at our peril. I think he describes the wound so effectively, because he is wounded himself, and that in itself doesn't diminish the book.

But in failing to overcome the wound, he fails to convince the unconvinced. In what follows, I overemphasize the negative. The book is mostly fair, and he has a point, but I'm trying to explain what will set people off. He is upset that Western countries don't have more toleration for Muslim cultures, despite the fact that the degree of toleration they do display would be unthinkable in many Muslim majority countries. Consider:

"Even in Europe and the developed world, the idea of secular nationalism was problematic. That is because membership, or rather citizenship, in the nation-state requires submission to the state's sovereignty over all aspects of life. Max Weber's axiom that the state is the entity that claims monopoly on the legitimate use of force has proven a woefully inadequate description of the nearly absolute powers claimed by even the freest and most liberal nation-state. The modern state holds a monopoly not only on force, but also on identity. It assumes meticulous control over every aspect of social life, both private and public. It is the primary repressive force for controlling human impulses. It declares what is and what is not proper religious or political expression. It demands consent over all activity - social, sexual and spiritual. Above all, it decides who can and cannot share in the collective identity it has itself demarcated. The state's sovereignty over life and death is absolute and unavoidable." (p.21)

This paragraph does not represent my experience of life in America, (though despite adding `and the developed world', I realized later that he was really talking primarily about Europe). At our founding, a great deal of thought was put into the rights of subcultures and the separation of powers. Subcultures whose laws do not conflict with the Constitution, like the Orthodox Jews and the Amish, have maintained their way of life within our borders for hundreds of years. Later in the book, I realized he was talking about the mindset of the European Generation E from whom the Jihadists spring. But it could also be an argument for tolerating subcultures whose laws are inconsistent with the Constitution of the land, and whose members are subjected to those alternative laws against their will. The case of Muslim women who want to live Western lives and who cannot break out has proven to be a problem in Europe. The European court must have jurisdiction in those cases or society collapses.

Other examples:
* He says that the Islamists and Jihadists who gathered to repulse the Soviets in Afghanistan were a diverse lot, and in other contexts emphasizes (correctly) the diversity in the Muslim world. But why aren't there 30 diverse Chinese or Christian or European extremist groups who can be recruited into a program of mudering everyone who isn't Chinese or Christian or European?
* He talks about European Islamophobia -- how it's time they got over it considering regions in Holland are nearly half Muslim. Why does he not in this context address the fact that the immigration goes all one way? Would the inverse situation in Esfahan be handled more equitably? He attributes it offhandedly several pages later to de-colonization, but that doesn't explain the explosion of Muslim populations in the Germanic countries - certainly not Scandinavia. I feel that if he is to convince Europe, he needs to address more effectively both Muslim culpability for their own situation and the the emotion a Frenchman has for la République.
* In his discussion of American Christianity, he describes evangelical Christians as extremists on a par with Jihadists, and then says that evangelicals make up about 50% of the American population, which may be true, because mainstream Methodists and Congregationalists are (I believe) evangelicals. The mainstream American Christian is left after this section feeling, "Wait a minute."
* He sometime indulges in name-calling. Oriana Fallaci is a pseudo-liberal. Geert Wilders is worse. I think Fallaci is at least as articulate and incisive as he is, though quite a bit more prone to pull punches. Rather than insulting her back, I'd like to see him address her point by point in a fair-minded way.
* Early in the book, he offhandedly dismisses the notion that these bands of transnational terrorist riff-raff have any real military power. Later on, he correlates them with the Zealots of the first Century who were easily crushed by the Romans. What bothers me about this analogy is that the hydrogen bomb had not been invented yet in 70 AD. I kept waiting in vain for him to mention the word `atom'. Some reasonable people like his beloved Obama appear to be far more concerned than he about big bombs in the hands of riff-raff. He's not sensible enough to the fact that Hitler was democractically elected riff-raff, and that that figures into Western calculations.

Anyway after all that whining, I want to conclude by recommending the book, especially if you have a different view, because I think he's a good and intelligent man, and I think you'll learn something worth learning.

Maybe debatable but worth a read . . . 2009-11-16

Reviewer: Ronald Scheer

A facetious reviewer might subtitle this book "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Islamism." I won't, because I'm not sure whether even a panel of experts on the book's subject could agree on how many stars to give it. In its favor, the book is a short, easy-to-read 173 pages asserting first a difference between Islamism and Jihadism and looking at a history of religious-inspired social movements from Masada to the present (not in that order).

Aslan devotes key parts of his analysis to the mind-set and backgrounds of the better known terrorists - 9/11 and 7/7 - in an effort to dispel Western stereotypes and direct attention to what he feels are the real origins of terrorist acts. Noting that militant jihadists typically spring from middle-class, educated families living in Europe, he ascribes their behavior to a youthful inability to forge a cross-cultural identity, while sympathizing with real and perceived oppression of Muslims everywhere and embracing a kind of religious extremism that actually rejects traditional Islam.

While some may pick up on his criticism of American foreign policies and the Bush/Rice years, many pages of Aslan's book actually sing the praises of American-style democracy, freedom of expression and religious tolerance. While maintaining that the only way to win a cosmic war (where Ultimate Reality is a Struggle between the Forces of Good and Evil) is to not fight one at all, he argues that the best way to deflate the perceived dangers of Islamists is to grant them participation in democratically run governments - an option that oppressive Middle East governments have generally rejected, with the tacit approval of the U.S.

Summed up like this, the argument of the book has the feel of something that could be very thin and insubstantial - more a matter of faith than a conviction based on more thorough analysis and research. Still, for an introduction to the issues, Aslan does a good job of opening up the subject for readers whose knowledge of Islam and the Middle East is no deeper than what can be gleaned from CNN. I'm settling on 4 stars for that reason alone.

An Intelligent Approach to a Complicated Story. 2009-09-13

Reviewer: M. L. Barrett

With the threat of international terrorism, we need information we can use. This author has the right stuff. Reactions like the botched Afghan War, the immoral Iraqi land grab and ignorance of the Palestinian Occupation only makes things much worse for the uninformed! I liked this book very much.