Customer Reviews

Between Memory and Desire: The Middle East in a Troubled Age

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Most of the books on the modern Middle East have axes to grind, and this book, say professors Jonathan Bloom and Sheila Blair, is the notable exception. Stephen Humphreys is one the HUGE names in Islamic history, and extremely well-respected academician at the University of California. His book is readable and unbiased. It portrays an intelligent picture of that part of the world that is still perceived very strangely by the many people outside it. (By the way, the previous reviewer, Daniel Pipes, is part of the same organization as Martin Kramer, who advocated removal of funding for Middle East Studies Programs. Pipes himself has just set up a McCarthyan website in which he keeps "dossiers" of any professors who might be sympathetic toward Islam and the Middle East and in which he urges students to report others. He's hardly objective.)

So much of what's going on in the Middle East today is the result of recent history, and it's important to understand that history for any kind of modern understanding. This book discusses the politics, economics, social tensions, and religious issues that shape the character of the Middle East. Very recommended for anyone who wants to understand what's going on there and how -- increasingly -- it will affect us in the Western world.

If one tries to understand the present political situation in the middle east, one is left lost and wandering helplessly. This book helps us to to understand this situation by digging deep into the political past of the middle east , and succeeds spectacularly !!

A definite read for all those interested in the middle east

I read the 1999 edition. It appears that the only difference between it and the 2005 edition is that the latter contains an additional 10-page preface, presumably commenting on 9/11 and the War in Iraq. I read the book recently, in 2007. It struck me as mildly dated and I regretted that particularly because it was so informative and insightful that I wished I was able to get the benefit of the author's knowledge and analysis of the most recent developments in the Middle East. If in fact Humphreys has not re-written or updated the text in the 2005 edition, that is unfortunate, but even so the book can be highly recommended.

"Between Memory and Desire" is a sober, thoughtful, and objective survey of the social, economic, and political problems confronting the various countries and peoples in the Middle East. Humphreys identifies and then explores at moderate length such issues as a) unprecedented population growth in the Middle East, without anywhere near commensurate economic growth; b) historical reasons for Mideasterners' disdain for constitutional and parliamentary government; and c) the pervasive overlay of Islam and how, in different ways and to differing degrees from country to country, it affects the prospects for democracy, economic growth, the place of women in society, and human rights (as judged by Western standards). There also is a trenchant chapter entitled "Jihad and the Politics of Salvation". Humphreys takes pains to note and discuss separately, where relevant, the situations in different Mideastern countries. (In hindsight, much of the discussion of conditions in Iraq is remarkably prescient, and one can't help but wish the Bush Administration had shared and/or taken more into account Humphreys' views.)

This is not easy reading. It demands careful attention, and seems most directed at a college-level audience, maybe even as an undergraduate or graduate text. But neither is the book unnecessarily dense or academic. For the type of hardheaded analysis of history, politics, economics, and social conditions that it is, it is very well written and presented. At the back, there are useful footnotes for those who wish to pursue certain issues in greater detail. Again, I recommend the book highly.

I found this an oddly pedestrian and listless book suffused with a sympathetic but apologetic and defensive tone about its subjects. The book's matter-of-fact, rather superficial and summary treatment of events of the past century maybe what some people are looking for. I was disappointed in the lack of historical vision, cultural analysis or presentation of data. It reads like a gentle argument against Americans or Westerners misreading the middle east. But it just didn't tell me anything new and offers no fresh perspective or narrative with any explanatory power.

In a calm and essayish sort of way, unbeholden to footnotes or fellow scholars, unbound by strict organization, he takes up some of the most difficult and persistent issues of the modern Middle East - the demographic and economic base, authoritarianism, pan-Arabism, "crazy states," military dictatorship, the role of Islam in politics - and analyzes them with intelligence and insight. Musing on three decades plus of studying the Middle East, Humphreys dares to assert the truths that so many of his fellow academics neglect, though he does so in the gentlest and most constructive manner. He takes up many themes; here is one, the dominant role of military dictatorship. Autocracy, Humphreys establishes, is the region's deepest and perhaps oldest dilemma. Already the warlords who quite rapidly took over from the Prophet Muhammad's successors lacked a sense of lawfulness. In the era A.D. 850-1250, for example, the "crucial political problem" facing those warlords was legitimacy - "some convincing reason (beyond brute force) why his subjects should obey him and his rivals should respect his right to exist." Sound familiar? It should, for the Middle East, the world's least democratic region, still grapples with the same demons (and they have names like Qadhdhafi, Asad, and Saddam). Middle Eastern populations, whether centuries ago or today, respond to this unhappy reality by withdrawing their allegiance from the authorities and turning instead for solace in the realms of religion and family life. This leads to a peculiar but widespread situation in which "Arab societies seem to regard their governments as an alien entity; they endure them, and they wait for them to go away." Trouble is, that stability becomes an end itself and has a fiercesome price. The preoccupation with staying in power means other goals - economic development, civil society, cultural florescence - are sacrificed. Take economics, where warlordism turns out to be the single greatest obstacle to advancement: "Only governments that enjoy the confidence of their citizens," Humphreys rightly observes, "can really take the steps needed" to enable growth. The Arabic-speaking countries not enjoying civil society, the rule of law, or many of the basic freedoms, they are falling ever-further behind in the brutally efficient global marketplace: "not one Middle Eastern state (with the partial exception of Turkey and of course Israel) has followed the only economic growth strategy that has worked since World War II - namely the export-oriented production of high-value-added manufactures." As a result, "there is not one Middle Eastern manufactured item that can be sold competitively on world markets."

Middle East Quarterly, December 1999