Legacy Of The Prophet: Despots, Democrats, And The New Politics Of Islam [Hardcover]

Anthony Shadid (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 17, 2001

The World Trade Center bombing, suicide attacks in Israel, the slaughter of tourists in Egypt and innocents in Algeria. One of the world’s great religions, Islam has become identified today with senseless bloodshed, its followers branded as irrational fanatics with a penchant for violence. Ours is the era of the “Islamic threat.” But another story remains to be told. Beyond the headlines, a transformation is under way in both the style and message of Islamic politics at the end of the twentieth century: a startling shift from militancy to democracy with vast implications for the West. Drawing on his years of reporting in more than a dozen countries of the Muslim world, Anthony Shadid charts the striking way in which the adolescence of yesterday’s Islamic militants is yielding to the maturity of today’s activists. Through interview and travelogue, he chronicles a new generation-in Lebanon, Egypt, Turkey and elsewhere-that is finding a more realistic and potentially more successful future through democratic politics. A crucial element of this change, and of Legacy of the Prophet, is his exploration of the failure of militant Islam in countries like Sudan and Iran, defeats that ironically may help make way for an alternative, democratic future. The transformation promises a better future for a region long ruled by soldiers and despots. For the West, it offers a compelling opportunity to find common ground with the Muslim world. But to do so, the book argues that we must make the difficult choice of supporting the emergence of democratic Islamic movements, possibly even allowing to come to power governments that, as it stands, have no love for the West. Legacy of the Prophet promises to redefine the debate over the future of political Islam.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A must read for anyone who wants to better understand Islam and its humanity." -- Nora Boustany, Washington Post

"A testament to the balanced yet uncompromising nature of [Shadid's] work." -- New Internationalist --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

About the Author

Anthony Shadid is a correspondent in Washington for the Boston Globe. Over the past decade, he has reported from most countries in the Middle East and was the winner of an Overseas Press Club citation in 1997 for the series of article that form the core of this book. He was formerly a correspondent in Cairo for the Associated Press.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books; 1St Edition edition (January 17, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813337798
• ISBN-13: 978-0813337791
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #102,734 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Hopeful Look at Political Islam, January 8, 2003

By 

M. Swinney "Marc My Words" (Flower Mound, TX) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Legacy Of The Prophet: Despots, Democrats, And The New Politics Of Islam (Paperback)

Anthony Shadid, though not a native of the Middle East, comes off sounding like one. From his vantage position of a Boston Globe Middle East reporter and Lebanese lineage, he has spent significant time in the Middle East and seems to have an insider's eye in analyzing the torrid political landscape there.

I went on a spate of reading books on the Middle East and Islam after September 11th and this book is at the top of my list and comes highly recommended. In comparison to V.S. Naipul's "Beyond Belief," I would point you to Shadid's book for a good in depth analysis of Islam's current and powerful effect on the Middle East. Naipul's book is good for telling a story of people's lives in non-Arabic Islamic countries, but Shadid's work is what I was looking for...a well-written and engaging breakdown of a variety of Middle East countries and how Islam shapes the politics and daily underpinnings of those places.

Shadid's purview is definitely broad but doesn't loose out in the details of each country and movement. "Legacy of the Prophet," primarily covers Sudan's failed Islamic government, Iran's petered out revolution and Khatami's reform, Egypt's emerging democratic Islamic movements, with several stops in between in Turkey, Palestine, Lebanon, and Afghanistan to name a few.

Shadid's overly optimistic thesis is that Islamic extremism is taking in it's last dying desperate breaths and emerging from it, or as a more widespread alternative, a form of democratic political Islam that seeks to inculcate change from within existing governments. Though optimistic, Shadid at least has taken the time to expose the broader good of political Islam to a West that largely seeks out confirmation of presupposed suppositions of a political Islam that is violent, close-minded, and bent on death and destruction of all things Western. It seems a case of a narrow-minded and hopeless small minority of Islamic extremists that continue to represent to the West what is accepted (but uninformed) as the face of Political Islam. Shadid points out that this may not be the case and does it in a way that will keep you interested from beginning to end.

I'm surprised more people aren't reading and reviewing this highly engaging work.

10 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars September 11th renders some of 'Legacy' dated, April 2, 2003

By 

J. Gillespie "gettingthere" ([e-mail]) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Legacy Of The Prophet: Despots, Democrats, And The New Politics Of Islam (Hardcover)

This optimistic view of Islamists published in January 2001 was rendered somewhat dated by events later that year. Even though Legacy of the Prophet continues to be a solid account of the moderation and rise of religious political movements in the Middle East, some of the more hopeful assertions would have been naive even if the World Trade Center remained intact. September 11th, of course, also changed some assumptions that would have been reasonable otherwise. All that aside, there remains considerable merit in many of the author's analyses of the region and its politics, and much of the book holds up. Legacy deserves three stars--but barely.

Author Anthony Shadid was an Associated Press correspondent based in Cairo. He understandably focuses much of the book on Egypt, and this provides Legacy with some great insight from the sources he cultivated there over the years. Unfortunately, the concentration on Cairo also minimizes those Islamic countries that probably are more important to the future of the relationship between the Muslim world and the West, notably Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

Shadid does an excellent job in explaining the contest between Islamist groups and the repressive regimes that govern them. The social welfare system provided by Hamas, for example, stands in stark contrast with the corrupt government led by the Palestinian Authority. Hezbollah provides for the impoverished Shia while the Beirut government stuggles to bring the nation back from the ashes of civil war.

The darker aspects of these and other groups, though, aren't really explored. One particularly galling aspect of the book is Shadid's near-apologies for the persececution of Christians and other religious minorities in the region. This is particularly strange given that Shadid comes from a Christian Lebanese background. It is difficult to imagine that anyone would try to minimize the persecution of Egypt's large Coptic minority, but that sometimes seems to be the case here.

The author does take a long, hard look at the failed Islamic experiments in the Sudan and in Iran, and attempts to differentiate between those governments and those where religious and secular parties compete. What Shadid fails to do is explain exactly why an Islamist Egypt or Turkey wouldn't, in the end, resemble the Sudan. Shadid's thesis is that once in power, the Center Party in Egypt, as one example, would synthesize the Islamic concept of the umma with Western-style pluralism and tolerance. The record indicates otherwise.

So the question that always lingers, but is never answered, is how a state based on religion can truly embrace democracy and pluralism. Shadid thinks it can, but history---events that predate Osama bin Laden and even Mohammed by millinnea---indicates otherwise.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A broad, authoritative history of Islamic politics today, July 11, 2002

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Legacy Of The Prophet: Despots, Democrats, And The New Politics Of Islam (Paperback)

Legacy Of The Prophet: Despots, Democrats, And The New Politics Of Islam by journalist and Middle East expert Anthony Shadid offers the reader a broad, authoritative history of Islamic politics today. Drawing upon his many years of reporting in more than a dozen countries throughout the Muslim world, Shadid accurately chronicles how a new generation of Islamic militants are coming around to a more realistic and potentially more successful advocacy of their goals through democratic politics. Legacy Of The Prophet is strongly recommended for Islamic Studies, Middle East Studies, and International Political Studies supplemental reading lists and academic reference collections.