Customer Reviews

The War for Muslim Minds: Islam and the West

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Kepel's new book is indispensable for anyone who wants to get a comprehensive, thorough, and balanced understanding of the threat posed by Islamic radicals today and of the logic/illogic behind the US response to that threat. Kepel's book focuses on three basic subjects. First, he provides a precis of the fuller description of Islamic radicalism that he gave in his earlier (excellent) book, Jihad. Second, he traces the neoconservative lineage of President Bush's approach to meeting the Islamic threat-- unsucessfully, so far. Notably, Kepel says almost nothing about Europe's response/attitude, perhaps because Europe seems to be waiting on the sidelines of history to see who will win, the US or the radicals. Finally, Kepel expresses hope that the Muslims who live in infidel Europe will prove to be a source of reconciliation and progress in the Muslim world at large, exporters of western liberalism as it were. With regard to this last point I can only say, "from his mouth to God's ear," although I personally see no reason for even guarded optimism. This is the best book on the subject by far.

Gilles Kepel provides an insightful, European perspective on relations between the West and Islam. As the title suggests, he does not see the two locked in intractable conflict. Muslims, like the West, are divided. The interests of the Saudi government are separate from those of the Wahhabite preachers; salafists can be distinguished from other Sunnis, and salafists themselves can be divided into pietists and jihadists. His description of the problems of the Muslims in Europe is particularly valuable and suggests issues that the American news media barely touches. His chapter on the dilemmas that face Saudi Arabia is also enlightening. The significance he places on the collapse of the Oslo agreement puts developments in the Middle East in an unusual perspective.

Unfortunately, his view of neoconservatives and the Bush administration is akin to Michael Moore's. It is somewhat more subtle, but hardly as profound as his understanding of the politics of Islam.

Nonetheless, that understanding makes the book invaluable, perhaps essential.

Gilles Kepel has produced a significant book that wonderfully addresses the complexities the world currently faces in trying to figure which way Muslims will turn; whether towards violent Jihad or an Islamic Democracy.

Kepel deals with many subjects pertaining to this issue. However, he spends a great deal of time comparing the goals of the neoconservative movement in the U.S. with al Qaeda and its intellectual prognosticators. On the one hand are the neocons. The neocons have clear goals in mind: securing the world's oil supply for the west; protecting and securing Israel; ensuring the continued dominance of the U.S., especially in military terms. However, they have deluded themselves into following fantastical policies that end up exacerbating problems (i.e. the invasion of Iraq and the blind support for Ariel Sharon) rather than improving the situation.

On the other hand are al Qaeda and its fellow travelers. Kepel explores this complex phenomenon by traveling through the history of Islamist thinking. He follows the development of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and beyond. He also spends a great deal of time explaining the development of religious authority in Saudi Arabia, including the state sponsored Salafi movement that was more inward looking, and the violent jihadist movement, more political and overt in its aims.

These two ideologies running into each other has been a contributing factor of much of the terror and insecurity in the world. Kepel sees as the best hope for a future Islamic democracy lying in Europe, where different states have taken divergent measures to respond to the challenge of new cultures. But the ends in each of the states of Western Europe are the same: to imbue in the Muslims in their society a respect for pluralism and democracy. Kepel sees the potential for the inculcation of democratic values in European Muslims having far reaching implications, for example by creating a respect for democratic institutions and the possibility of those Muslim supporters of democracy exporting their ideas back to their home countries. Either way, democracy can't be imported by foreigners, especially by force.

Kepel has written an important book. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in confronting one of the most important challenges of our time.

I read this book for one simple reason: it was one of just six books on the "short list" of the Army Command and General Staff College Commander's Counterinsurgency Reading List. Moreover, it was touted as "an excellent overview of the broader radical Islamic insurgency." After reading "The War for Muslim Minds" by the French political scientist Gilles Kepel I find such strong endorsement from the United States Armed Forces rather puzzling.

To begin with, there is nothing new to be found here. Giles delivers a basic narrative on the confluence of events that have led to the current conflict in the Middle East: the second Intifada, the ascendancy of the neoconservative movement in the United States, the emergence of Al Qaeda, the Wahhabite religious awakening (sahwa) in Saudi Arabia, and the post-invasion civil war in Iraq. Each of these issues has been better and more fully addressed elsewhere. For instance, Giles' chapter on "The Neoconservative Revolution" is essentially a redaction of James Mann's "The Rise of Vulcans," only more condemnatory and less accurate (I tend to agree with Tom Ricks' assessment that the neocons have "been given too much blame and too much credit"). His chapter on the foundation and rise of Al Qaeda ("Striking at the Faraway Enemy") is a weak synopsis of Lawrence Wright's Pulitzer Prize Winning "The Looming Tower." To the extent that Giles has added anything new to previous works, it would be his thinly veiled anti-American tilt to the overall storyline. (Giles accepts as indisputable fact the argument that the pre-invasion claim of WMDs in Iraq was a bald-faced lie used as pretext to overthrow Saddam for the sake of Israel's security. My question to those who subscribe to that belief has always been: if the administration was willing to go to such mendacious lengths, why not conduct an equally complex conspiracy to plant evidence to justify the original lie?)

But these are just quibbles. The main reason "The War for Muslim Minds" disappoints is that the author fundamentally fails to address the compelling central thesis of the book - "the most important battle in the war for Muslim minds during the next decade will be fought not in Palestine or Iraq but in communities of believers on the outskirts of London, Paris, and other European cities, where Islam is already a growing part of the West." The final chapter ("The Battle for Europe") supposedly addresses this challenge of winning second generation European-Muslims away from both the quietist salafist and violent jihadist influences; however, Giles focuses almost exclusively on a situation report from France circa 2004 with heavy emphasis on the controversial Islamic activist Tariq Ramadan. He suggests that the ability of the West to win-over their second-generation Muslim citizens to a universalist notion of citizenship and civil, open society will determine the outcome of the current ideological confrontation that is, in his mind, every bit as threatening to twenty-first century peace as communism was to the twentieth. Yet Kepel does not offer any pragmatic solutions or even novel insights as to how the West can successfully compete with the powerful elements in the European-Muslim communities who stridently resist cultural and political integration.

Finally, there is a sobering, defeatist message in this book. Giles contends that "though the ultimate goals of jihadists and neoconservatives diverged, their proximate goals were remarkable aligned: ousting the region's regimes, whose authoritarianism and corruption they both abhorred." He suggests that a shake-out in the Middle East is indeed coming and that the neocons vision of "a virtuous cycle of missiles and tanks, liberation and democratization" is losing out to Al Qaeda's dream of a new greater Islamic Caliphate.

This book is an easy to read, somewhat easy to understand wrapup of what is currently happening with the Global War on Terror and the fight for Muslim hearts and minds. The author does a great job in explaining some of the differences in the Salafist community and also in pointing out that Wahhabists are Salafists, but not necessarily of the Bin Laden strain, something that many people in the West just don't get.

However, if there were any down sides for me, it was the part about the fight in Europe for Muslim hearts and minds. It focuses, somewhat understandbly, on France. There are fights going on all around Europe and I think the author could have done a better job bringing that to light. I also feel that although he demonstrates the conflicts within the Muslim community in Europe, one needs to realize that these issues trasncend national borders, although each government is trying to deal with its specific Muslim community, rather than getting that Europe needs to deal with this issue in a better fashion from Spain to Germany.

As for one of the poor reviews implying that the author is not facing the truth regarding the 2000 intifidah, she is incorrect. It did start when Sharon visited the Dome of the Rock (not sure if that was it) for the Arabs. Yes, other Knesset officials may have visited it, but none like Sharon. For the Palestinians, that was the event that triggered the uprising, regardless of whether this is superficial analysis or not. In the Arab world, as in all other places, perception is reality. This is something that too many Westerners fail to comprhend when dealing with Muslims...............there is not necessarily one truth.

This is an excellent overview of how the United States got into a situation from which there seems to be no satisfactory exit. Gilles Keppel concisely and clearly explains the history of the Muslim movement as well as the numerous missteps made by the United States in the Middle East, particularly since 1945. He shows that both Democratic and Republican administrations have made moves that can at best be described as pragmatic rather than prescient and right in the long run. Keppel's insight into how the rest of the people in the world and Muslims might accommodate each other is less than convincing, but, in sum, this is an important book that well deserves careful reading.

This should be required reading -- and debating -- material for the post-Sept 11th Western World. This is why there is an al-Jazeera

And why many light-skinned Scots and English broadcasters have gone to work for ***them***.

Gilles Kepel is a professor of Middle East Studies at the Institute of Political Studies in Paris, and is the perfect author for WAR FOR MUSLIM MINDS: ISLAM AND THE WEST: his background succeeds in synthesizing the wealth of detail charting the breakdown of Middle East/Western relations. Chapters provide both a history and analysis of the breakdown of communications between East and West, pinpointing changing policies and party lines on both sides and analyzing the effects of terrorism on the peace process. An involving survey and history charts the ongoing `war'.

This book was a major disappointment after the author's brilliant work JIHAD. Jihad was published just as the US was destroying the Taliban, and I had hoped that this work would bring us up to date with the invasion of Iraq. I immediately noticed that Kepel did not bother to correct his characterization of US tactics in Afghanistan as "carpet-bombing", which it wasn't. Then he referred to photos of American "sexual abuse and torture" of Iraqi prisoners (which was more like hazing) while calling videos of the beheading of a screaming American youth as "mistreatment." Events have shown Kepel's earlier theory that Islamic fundamentalism is falling apart is quite correct, losing out to a rising tide of democracy in Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt, and even Saudi Arabia, but he sort of goes off the rails to talk about the Islamic diaspora in Europe and elsewhere as the hope for the future. I guess he's afraid of not getting invited to the right cocktail parties in Paris if he endorsed anything to do with American policy.

This book is a good start and makes a few good points while at the same time falling into huge pitfalls. First this book gives a good introduction to morphing of Islamic terror and the rise of hatred for the `West" and particularly America.

Little insight is given into history. For instance how does one square the rise of fundamentalism with the rise of Arab nationalism? Are they not two sides of the same coin? The Muslims determination to confront the west and having seen the total failure of Nasserism, not embraces Fundamentalism. Where is he context of the war inside the Muslim world between Seculars and Radicals? What of the fact that every terrorist who created 9/11 was schooled in Europe and learned his hate from European finances and Saudi financed Imams?

This book presents the fundamental flaw that America should be wasting its time `winning the hearts and minds of Muslims". This book doesn't understand that the present conflict has nothing to do with winning hearts and minds, the very idea is in fact imperialistic. Did America try to win the hearts and minds of Communists? Did America succeed in Winning the hearts and minds of the Nazis? This book puts the blame on the `neo-conservatives soldiers blaming their obsession with `Israel' and `Oil'. But is it not true that Sept 11 was planned long before the neo-con rise to power? How does one square that incongruous argument? The main failure of this book is its lack of historical depth and its lack of realizing that Islamic fundamentalist/Islamism is simply the logical outgrowth of society, a natural phenomenon, like the rise of Communism or Fascism, that takes place from time to time in a society where people perceive themselves as victims.

Seth J. Frantzman