Islamophobia - David E Sanger

In October 2005, with the war in Iraq headed off the rails and his own visions of a democratizing Middle East crumbling, George W. Bush tried to rally the nation with a call against a new global enemy: “Islamofascism.” In a series of speeches, he described America’s disparate enemies as a united force, bound together by a common vision. Unless America rose to the challenge, he argued, jihadists would realize their ambition to “establish a radical Islamic empire that spans from Spain to Indonesia.”

Juan Cole’s “Engaging the Muslim World” maps those fault lines, and one can only wish Bush had mulled over such material (in fact, much of it was contained in his briefing papers) before the misadventures of the post-9/11 era began. Like Lawrence Wright’s remarkable “Looming Tower,” published almost three years ago, this field guide to the politics of modern Islam traces the history of the different movements, whose violent offshoots are still morphing into new forms. Along the way, Cole, a historian at the University of Michigan, explores what he sees as the twin dynamic of “Islam Anxiety” in the United States and “American Anxiety” in the Arab world.