The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror
The book looks like a collection of facts and factoids loosely connected together by very unconvincingly presented ideas. While the author manages to produce an interesting review of the history of the Arabs, it only picks some events that support a particular point of view. The book completely avoids to mention anything about the British influence in the Arab world and how it shaped and influenced the present day society. The author never misses a chance to justify the positions or actions of the US and Britain while also taking every occasion to demonize the everybody else (well, the Russians mainly).
The book is worth reading only to gain some historical background of the life of Arabs and the Islamic world but be weary, it's biased and incomplete. I did not have the impression that author makes a clear point of the major problems of Islam or the Arabs and also the author fails to see any positive developments in the Arab world. The whole recent history is viewed in the light of terrorist attacks and nothing else.
It's mentioned that the book is based on an article published in The New Yorker and unfortunately this is quite obvious. Throughout the book I had the feeling that the author was fighting to prolong and extend a core idea in full blown book. There is a certain feeling of "beating around the bush" in most chapters.
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