Review by Choice Review
Dahlan (Queen Mary, Univ. of London) contrasts the 16th-century European construct of the sovereign territorial state with the Islamic ideal of the umma as a global faith-based community. He examines the first two Islamic states in Mecca and Medina in the seventh and eighth centuries CE and the brief Sharifian state following WW I, all of which existed in the Hijaz area in western coastal Arabia. He urges a reexamination of Islamic governance policies and practices that focuses on the Hijaz; he accords this emphasis because of the region's fundamental significance in Islamic history and thought. Dahlan rejects what he describes as the neo-medievalist ISIS and the post-modernist Al-Qaeda as well as the Wahhabi ideology of Saudi Arabia. He proposes to avert the growing strife in the Middle East and larger Islamic world via a reemerged Hijaz as a focus for thoughtful dialogue and exchange among Muslims and a cultural and spiritual hub to reunite them. His emphasis on the past significance of the Hijaz is both compelling and understandable, but his argument that it can serve as a solution to the present difficulties of Islamic states seems perhaps overly idealistic. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, and faculty.--Brice Harris, emeritus, Occidental College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
