Review by Choice Review
Sharabi's critique of contemporary Arab culture calls to mind Matthew Arnold's "wandering between two worlds, one dead, the other powerless to be born." Sharabi, editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies, argues that in Arab society "it is as difficult to find a truly modernized individual or institution as it is to locate genuinely traditional ones." His essay attempts to trace the sources of neopatriarchy, a social mutation engendered by failed modernization. The consequences of distorted social change in the Arab world today include intellectual thought that is imitative and noncritical; continued individual attachment to primary groups (family, clan) instead of class or national consciousness; increasing economic dependency and maldistribution of income; and highly personalized political regimes made impregnable by the modern apparatus of control available to them. The failure of both Islamic and secular reformists to avoid or to overcome these defects has left the field to Islamic fundamentalism. That counterrevolutionary thrust must itself be parried by critical thought and reform that keep open the possibility of genuine modernity. Graduate readership. -L. M. Lewis, Eastern Kentucky University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
