Review by Choice Review
This "second edition" is a second printing of an unrevised 2008 book with 52 new pages. It reiterates Tibi's oft-stated invective against the "invented tradition" of Shari'a-based struggles to impose an authoritarian Islamic "world order." Tibi's apocalyptic view of a clash, not of civilizations but of cultures and ideas, is reminiscent of American Red scares in which a handful of communists were deemed imminent domestic threats. In Europe today, "numbers matter little." Whether by violence, stealth, or demographics, Islamists are likely "winners of the ongoing war of ideas." Tibi (emer., Univ. of Göttingen, Germany) eschews empirical data, favoring history, philosophy, and textual analysis. Because he is engaged in a war of ideas, in which politics and numbers matter not, Turkey's Justice and Development Party and al Qaeda are part of the same conspiracy. In contrast with his bipolar division of the world into good and bad Muslims, Tibi's afterthoughts in the second edition are more nuanced and interesting in their suggestion that the Arab Spring, though not changing the Islamists' anti-democratic goals, may have caused a shift from violence to an "institutional Islamism" that at least gives the "younger generation ... an opportunity for real change." Summing Up: Recommended. Researchers and faculty. --Edward V. Schneier, City College of the City University of New York
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
