By: Faisal Ghori

Works Reviewed:

“Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam”
By Gill Kepel
Belknap Press, 464 pages, 2002

“Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah”
By Olivier Roy
Columbia University Press, 349 pages, 2005

“Face to Face with Political Islam”
By Francois Burgat
I.B. Tauris, 288 pages, 2002

“Pan-Islamism is dormant — yet we have to reckon with the possibility that the sleeper may awake if ever the cosmopolitan proletariat of a ‘Westernized’ world revolts against Western domination and cries out for anti-Western leadership. That call might have incalculable psychological effects in evoking the militant spirit of Islam — even if it had slumbered as long as the Seven Sleepers — because it might awaken echoes of a heroic age…. If the present situation of mankind were to precipitate a ‘race war,’ Islam might be moved to play her historic role once again.”
Arnold Toynbee, 1947

“The question of Islam as a political force is a vital question of our times, and will be for several years to come. The precondition for its treatment with a minimum intelligence is probably not to start from a platform of hate.”
Michel Foucault, Dits et Ecrits III, Gallimard, Paris, 1996, p. 708