This volume sets out to reject anti-Islamic views of a future dominated by the conflict between "Islam" and "the West". It has been revised to encompass the events of 11 September 2001, spiralling violence in the Middle East and President George Bush's proposed identification of an "axis of evil". Considering the sources of Islamic militancy and analyzing the confrontational rhetoric of both Islamic and anti-Muslim demagogues, Halliday provides an alternative, critical, but cautious, reassessment. The Middle East, he argues, can be treated neither as a distinct nor as a unified region, but must be seen as a set of disparate societies, facing and reacting to the problems of economic development and political change.
Part 1 Interpreting the Middle East: the Middle East and international politics; the Iranian revolution in comparative perspective; the Gulf War 1990-91. Part 2 Myths of confrontation: Islam and the west - "Threat of Islam" or "Threat to Islam"?; human rights and the Islamic Middle East - universalism and relativism; anti-Muslimism and contemporary politics - one ideology or many?; Orientalism and its critics.
