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Trial of a Thousand Years: World Order and Islamism (Hoover Institution Press Publication) Hardcover – May 1, 2011

ISBN-13: 978-0817913243 ISBN-10: 0817913246 Edition: 1st

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Product Details

  • Series: Hoover Institution Press Publication (Book 607)
  • Hardcover: 166 pages
  • Publisher: Hoover Institution Press; 1st edition (May 1, 2011)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0817913246
  • ISBN-13: 978-0817913243
  • Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.7 x 8.5 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #217,236 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

“A Muslim has no nationality except his religious beliefs,” said Egyptian Sayyid Qutb, a key figure in the world of political Islam who was executed by the secular regime in his homeland in 1966. For the Islamists, the normal diplomatic order, constructed by unbelievers and accepted by state regimes across the Arab Islamic world, is no order of theirs. In this book, Charles Hill presents a detailed historical perspective on the assault of Islamism against the order of states.

To understand the current Islamist assault on world order, says the author, it is necessary to recognize that every major war of the modern age has been an ideologically driven attempt—no two alike—to overthrow and replace the Westphalian international state system. Each war, he shows, sheds light on the question of world order and Islamism. He explains, for example, how, with the defeat and final exile of Napoleon in 1815, the French Revolution’s immediate threat to the international system was ended, but how its ideology would continue to live in later times and places, not least in the Middle East. Moving through history all the way to the cold war, he documents how the Soviets realized that they could exploit Arab discontent with the state system. And he reveals more of the vicissitudes of cold war era diplomacy in the story of Iran, which maneuvered its way through the troubles of the twentieth century—colonial exploitation, war, and revolution—to be in, but never of, the international system.

He concludes that America must not give up its values; neither should it retreat by practicing them only at home or by telling ourselves that our values are no more worthy than any others selected at random from the world’s many cultures. The first step, he says, is to recognize the problem and then try to develop ways to deal with the exploitation of asymmetries by the enemies of world order. From the global point of view, the stakes are enormous.

From the Back Cover

The challenge that Islamists pose for world order

The Islamist war on the international state system

The Islamist war on world order

For decades, the ideologues of pan-Islam have refused to accept the boundaries and the responsibilities of the order of states. In Trial of a Thousand Years, Charles Hill analyzes the long war of Islamism against the international state system. Hill places the Islamists in their proper historical place, showing that they are but the latest challenge to the requirements that states had placed on themselves since the international system was born in 1648.

The author describes the many wars on the world order over the centuries--the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars, World Wars I and II, the cold war—and gives a unique historical perspective to the Islamic challenge of the twenty-first century in Iran, Afghanistan, and beyond. He identifies the key areas in which the Islamists are at odds with the rest of the world—legal, military, the state, women, democracy, nuclear weapons, and values—and tells what the United States, as the chief protector of world order, must do to deal effectively with the adversaries of the international system.

Charles Hill, a career minister in the U.S. Foreign Service, is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. Hill was executive aide to former U.S. secretary of state George P. Shultz (1985–89) and served as special consultant on policy to the secretary-general of the United Nations from 1992 to 1996. He is also the Brady-Johnson Distinguished Fellow in Grand Strategy and Senior Lecturer in International Studies and in Humanities at Yale University.

Customer Reviews

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25 of 26 people found the following review helpful By Kirk H Sowell on August 21, 2011
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
Charles Hill's "Trial of a Thousand years: World Order and Islamism" is an ambitious albeit concise attempt to frame a new paradigm based on a framework of international law, the modern state system and its conflict with Islamists. It is a "procedural system" which allowed states to maintain their own internal policies as long as they did not export a domestic ideology - religious or secular - in the international realm. The book is divided into two parts, three chapters on historical development and three more applying the theory to events since 1979. If I could separate ratings, I'd give the historical section four or fivs stars, but probably just one for application.

Chapter one, "Two World Orders," discusses the Christian West and the Islamic Caliphate. Chapter Two, "The Modern Ordering Takes Shape," gets to the core of the procedural/substantive distinction, saying in effect, you can have whatever religion or culture you want, just do make it the basis of your relations with other states. Chapter three, "The Wars on World Order," starts with the French revolution, following Henry Kissinger's framework labeling Napoleonic France as "revolutionary."

Hill's paradigm explains a lot, but at times he appears to stretch to fit every major conflict into it. For example, he cites Bismark and the Franco-Prussian War, but Bismark's Prussia was hardly revolutionary; after defeating France they took a couple of provinces and left it at that. After World War I, Hill cites Woodrow Wilson's international agenda approvingly, breezing by what I view as the contradiction between his paradigm and Wilson's quest to export the American political model all over the world.

Where the book takes a wrong turn is with chapter four, "The Islamist Challenge Takes Shape.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful By Cincinnatus on October 20, 2012
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
This is a helpful book by a credible author showing the ongoing tensions between Islam and Christendom---from the ancient to the modern era. The book's strength is its appeal to both the casual reader and to the scholar. The casual reader will be informed by learning that Christians and Muslims made very different choices during the medieval/reformation era: the former embracing progress, modernity, technology and science, the latter rejecting them. Scholars will like the book because it makes a novel case that the chief difference between the two establishments is that Islam rejects the system of states and the international order; choosing to believe that the Caliphate is absolute and exempt from the give and take of international negotiations as well as the canons of international law. The book leads to the conclusion that the current eruption of tensions between the Islam and Christendom will not be alleviated by facile political arguments. At best, the conflict can be managed.
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An authorative history of Islam, and our challenge in dealing with it today, all in less than 200 pages. A must read for anyone seriously concerned about the future of western civilization.
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