dweenzers's review against another edition
5.0
I found the book really easy to follow even though I knew very little both about pre-colonial history and the post-colonial nationalist movements in the Middle East. The author is very clear in signposting her arguments, which made it easier for me to figure out why she was including particular examples. The book is written with someone who has little knowledge of the Middle East or Islam in mind, and the author includes enough explanatory material to follow the argument, without seeming patronising.
Generally, she covers three main sections:
1. The evolution of the ideas behind Islamophobia (from the 7thc. to the 20thc.) and how these ideas persist today. She includes the fluctuating relationship Europe had with Muslims up until the enlightenment, and looks at how colonisation and imperialism shaped the way scholars and thus the West came to understand Muslims.
2. International politics (The US' contradictory stance towards Political Islam during the Cold War; The internal factors behind the fall and rise of Political Islam in the Middle East; The post-Cold War US foreign policy factions and the similarities between the neo-cons and liberals)
3. Domestic US politics (use of the legal system to target Arabs and Muslims; rise of right-wing Islamophobes; rise of the homegrown terrorist scare)
She concludes with suggestions on how to fight and resist Islamophobia.
While this book might contain information that is general knowledge to a lot of people (I'm thinking of people like my dad), I learnt a lot from it and would recommend it to one and all.
Generally, she covers three main sections:
1. The evolution of the ideas behind Islamophobia (from the 7thc. to the 20thc.) and how these ideas persist today. She includes the fluctuating relationship Europe had with Muslims up until the enlightenment, and looks at how colonisation and imperialism shaped the way scholars and thus the West came to understand Muslims.
2. International politics (The US' contradictory stance towards Political Islam during the Cold War; The internal factors behind the fall and rise of Political Islam in the Middle East; The post-Cold War US foreign policy factions and the similarities between the neo-cons and liberals)
3. Domestic US politics (use of the legal system to target Arabs and Muslims; rise of right-wing Islamophobes; rise of the homegrown terrorist scare)
She concludes with suggestions on how to fight and resist Islamophobia.
While this book might contain information that is general knowledge to a lot of people (I'm thinking of people like my dad), I learnt a lot from it and would recommend it to one and all.
naseem's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
5.0
A must-read for anyone critical of empire, especially US empire. Accessibly written with limited jargon and very clear argument.
sanareading's review against another edition
4.0
very important read, highly recommend everyone reads this. a bit dense esp towards the middle, and generally very academic but i can’t think of another book i’ve read recently that i’ve learned more from. i also don’t know any other book that discusses the history and modern contextualizations of islamophobia in a single piece. i hate imperialism. again highly recommend to everyone !!
viralmysteries's review
informative
4.75
An absolutely phenomenal intellectual contribution on how "Islamophobia" is actually better understood as "anti-Muslim racism", and the role it plays in upholding U.S. imperial interests. Highly highly recommend.
fcbugreads's review
5.0
An amazingly well written book on how Western politics and culture have stigmatized an entire group of people and religion.
usedtotheweather's review
Read part of this in preparation for Kumar's visit and lecture.
joannerixon's review
3.0
If your instinctive response to the phrase “liberal Islamophobia” is something like, “that doesn’t make any sense, its conservatives who are racists,” you should probably read Kumar's book. This is assuming you've already done some reading about the history of Islam and are familiar with imperialism's impact on our history. Without a solid grounding in the history of Islam and of Europe’s imperial ventures in the Islamic world, there’s a lot of information here that might be difficult to follow. This book occupies a very particular niche, and if you’re educating yourself on the social forces that have created this current moment in the fall of the American empire (and you should be), that means you're looking for exactly this, and you’ll be glad you’ve found it.
I myself only finished this book because a friend wanted to talk about it. That was enough to motivate me all the way through, but otherwise I probably would have set it down. The writing quality is functional, not outstanding, and since I’ve been obsessively reading news analysis of America’s wars since 2001, most of the information was completely familiar to me. For my history degree I took several courses that touched on the history of Islam-and-the-West: the Crusades, the Atlantic slave trade, the Russians in Afghanistan, the British in the Middle East and the Americans in Iran. Disillusionment with the Iraq War was a formative part of my young adulthood. I’m old enough to remember all the way back to 2010-2011 and the Arab Spring, how hopeful some of us were and how reluctant the Obama administration was to support Arab democratic revolutionaries.
So when Kumar says, “McCarthyism wasn’t simply about one out-of-control senator, but a political system (including both Democrats and Republicans) that allowed a figure like Joseph McCarthy to set the political agenda. McCarthy was a useful tool in prosecuting the Cold War—particularly in creating a climate of fear where dissent could be punished and neutralized. The right-wing Islamophobic warriors play a similar role during the era of the War on Terror. They are not “alien outsiders” but emerge from within the political establishment, the security apparatus, the academy, the think tank milieu, and the mainstream media. Thus, far from “infiltrating” an otherwise good system the new McCarthyites are a product of, and fit comfortably within, the structures of American empire,” I’m not surprised.
If you are surprised, read this book! If you hear, “anti-Muslim bigotry is about creating a political climate in which the United States can invade other countries at will and suppress dissent at home,” and want to fight about it, read this book! It’s pretty good, and reading it is a much better experience than fighting in the comments under dumb Facebook memes.
n.b. I got this book from my not-so-local public library, downloaded instantly as an ebook. Super convenient.
I myself only finished this book because a friend wanted to talk about it. That was enough to motivate me all the way through, but otherwise I probably would have set it down. The writing quality is functional, not outstanding, and since I’ve been obsessively reading news analysis of America’s wars since 2001, most of the information was completely familiar to me. For my history degree I took several courses that touched on the history of Islam-and-the-West: the Crusades, the Atlantic slave trade, the Russians in Afghanistan, the British in the Middle East and the Americans in Iran. Disillusionment with the Iraq War was a formative part of my young adulthood. I’m old enough to remember all the way back to 2010-2011 and the Arab Spring, how hopeful some of us were and how reluctant the Obama administration was to support Arab democratic revolutionaries.
So when Kumar says, “McCarthyism wasn’t simply about one out-of-control senator, but a political system (including both Democrats and Republicans) that allowed a figure like Joseph McCarthy to set the political agenda. McCarthy was a useful tool in prosecuting the Cold War—particularly in creating a climate of fear where dissent could be punished and neutralized. The right-wing Islamophobic warriors play a similar role during the era of the War on Terror. They are not “alien outsiders” but emerge from within the political establishment, the security apparatus, the academy, the think tank milieu, and the mainstream media. Thus, far from “infiltrating” an otherwise good system the new McCarthyites are a product of, and fit comfortably within, the structures of American empire,” I’m not surprised.
If you are surprised, read this book! If you hear, “anti-Muslim bigotry is about creating a political climate in which the United States can invade other countries at will and suppress dissent at home,” and want to fight about it, read this book! It’s pretty good, and reading it is a much better experience than fighting in the comments under dumb Facebook memes.
n.b. I got this book from my not-so-local public library, downloaded instantly as an ebook. Super convenient.
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