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The Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity Hardcover – April 17, 2002

by Tariq Ali (Author)
4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 61 ratings
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The inviolability of the American mainland, breached on 9/11/2001 for the first time since 1812, led to extravagant proclamations by the pundits. It was a sudden menace confronting the twenty-first century, an event of unprecedented dimensions, a new world-historical turning point.

Tariq Ali challenges these assumptions, arguing instead that what we have experienced is the return of History in a horrific form, with religious symbols playing a part on both sides: ‘Allah’s revenge’, ‘God is on Our side’, ‘God Bless America’. The ‘war against terror’ is a clash of fundamentalisms, religious versus imperial. Each is honored by time-honored features – a shameless use of disproportional military power by one and a carefully targeted fanaticism by its Other. The two forces are hardly equal. One is a product of despair, the other is an empire, whose ability to go to war is a chilling reminder of its place in the world. Contemporary politics is conducted and presented in the elitist style of intelligence agencies: disinformation, false information, exaggeration of enemy strength and capability, explanation of a TV image with a brazen lie and censorship. The aim is to delude and disarm the citizenry. Everything is either over-simplified or reduced to a wearisome incomprehensibility.

This wide-ranging book blends history, literature, politics and autobiography to challenge the conformist culture of our times. Ali argues that many of the values proclaimed by the Enlightenment retain their relevance, while portrayals of the American Empire as a new emancipatory project are fatally misguided.
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  1. Print length
    344 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Verso
  4. Publication date
    April 17, 2002
  5. Dimensions
    0.63 x 0.12 x 0.83 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1859846793
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1859846797
  8. See all details
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4.2 out of 5 stars
61 global ratings

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Top reviews from the United States

  • Tim Johnson
    5.0 out of 5 stars Read it for a non-American view of the world
    Reviewed in the United States on July 28, 2003
    Verified Purchase
    I confess I began this wonderful book about this time last year. Why, you have every right to ask, did I take over a year to complete a relatively small book and the answer lies in the fact that I feel Mr. Ali's book is several books in one and therefore you can read one part as complete unto itself.
    The topics that Ali explores are diverse but all of immense importance to America as she tries to feel her way in a world that is hostile to her much valued beliefs. Everybody in the world knows that America is hell-bent on building the first world empire but Ali's book is the best indication that goal, if it happens, will be more costly than the Washington conservatives think it will be.
    If there are any of those conservatives who would like an insight into the movements of the contemporary world, I suggest that they grasp the contents of chapter 19, if little else in Ali's book, because no more need be read to have an insight into the ways of our modern world.
    Further, chapter 16 on his country-Pakistan-will not only illuminate an area of the world that for many decion-makers is still a blank-a blank whose mysteriousness will, and perhaps already has, lead to involvement mistakes that will haunt this new empire for many years to comme.
    As one commentator said-this book is a modern political classic that should be read by all who think to captain the ship of this empire.
    7 people found this helpful
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  • Carool Kersten
    4.0 out of 5 stars Iconoclastic account of world affairs
    Reviewed in the United States on June 16, 2002
    For those who want to understand how such seemingly disparate issues like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Kashmir question, and the situation in Afghanistan fit together in the Post-Cold War world this latest book by Tariq Ali is almost mandatory reading.
    This is surely a very personal account of world affairs, and in many instances the author is driven just as much by his own convictions as by a desire to explain. For this is not an unbiased analysis. But to be fair to the author, the iconoclastic Tariq Ali makes no attempt to hide this and would be the first to admit that he has his own political agenda.
    Readers who do not share Ali's political ideology, and this reviewer is one of them, should nevertheless not be put off by this. For the very value of THE CLASH OF FUNDAMENTALISMS is that it captures a mood, a mood prevalent among scores of people in what we like to call the Third World. And as the anthropologist Clifford Geertz has explained in an entirely different context, moods are just as potent as driving forces for human behavior as the more focussed motivations.
    Another quality that the author can not be denied is courage. The opening sentence of the first chapter is namely: I never really believed in God. Not many people of Muslim extraction would have dared to make such a confession, at least not since the Salman Rushdie Affair.
    Tariq Ali is indeed not your average representative of the Third World citizen. Born in a family of feudal landowners in the Punjab province of British India, which was divided after the partition between Pakistan and India, his relatives played a role in politics before and after independence: a grandfather was chief minister, and others held senior positions in the armed forces or served in parliament. Ali's parents, however, became staunch Marxists, while he himself is a self-confessed Trotskyist. Since his student-days he has been at the forefront of many political activities at the extreme left of the political spectrum.
    His family background and his own political activism have made Tariq Ali a uniquely well-connected man, and this book has benefited from that. Throughout the years the author has had access to the military and political establishment in Pakistan, worked for the Russell Tribunal, traveled in worn-torn Northern Vietnam and visited Palestinian refugee camps. He shows himself not only very well read in Islamic history, but is also conversant with the writings of political radicals of both left and right. He augments his account with examples from literature: critical writers such as Abd al-Rahman Munif and Nizar Kabbani are or were personal acquaintances.
    All this makes his book an important read for everybody who wants to at least attempt to view the world through the eyes of `the Wretched of the Earth'.
    In the first part Tariq Ali gives a genealogy of the heritage of Islamic civilization. Taking us from his personal introduction to Islamic learning, via the days of the Prophet Muhammad and early conquests to the crusades and the Ottoman Empire. This is followed by two more thematic chapters on the wide diversity of Islamic doctrines - meant to dispel the incorrect image of Islam as a monolithic bloc - and a very interesting discourse on gender issues in Islam.
    In the second part of the book the author introduces us into the modern Middle East. Here Ali explains the way a puritanical strand of Islam ends up making common cause with the imperialistic designs of the West, and how the founding of Israel turned the Middle East into a political quagmire, both because of irreconcilable differences and outside manipulations. It is the author's accomplishment to give a readable account of how Zionism, the experiments with socialism in Arab countries such as Egypt and Syria, the trauma caused by the 1967 war, the rise and fall of Anwar Sadat and the Shah, have all been instrumental in creating a mood, which in 1987 exploded into the Intifadah. The result was that during the last decades of the twentieth century virtually the whole Middle East was submerged in an 'Ocean of Terror'.
    In the next part, Ali shifts his attention back to his region of origin: South Asia. Because I am not as familiar with this part of the world as with the Middle East, I found this the most informative part of the book. The author explains how the tensions between India and Pakistan can be traced back to the undesired partition of former British India. During the run-up to independence the leaders of the Congress Party and Muslim League did not envisage the horror and atrocities to which they would expose the people they were suppose to represent. Later on it lead to a bloody war in Bangladesh, while Tariq Ali qualifies the Kashmir issue as the unfinished business of partition. Continued interference by the post-Word War II superpowers did nothing to improve the situation. Pakistani and Indian politics became already hopelessly corrupt, even before the situation got completely out of hand in Afghanistan.
    While in the previous parts the author has tried to give an explanation for the rage that is holding large parts of the Islamic world in its grip, his final section starts with a chapter entitled `A Short-Course History of US Imperialism'. In many instances Ali hits the nail on the head - the doctrine of Neo-Liberalism is just as fundamentalist in character as Islamic radicalism. His comparison between the theses presented by two high priests of post-Cold War doctrine, Francis Fukuyama and Samuel Huntington, I found particularly insightful. But at the same time the author's personal political predilections come to the fore as he can not resist filling us in on the involvement of these two `state intellectuals' in some of America's unsavory political actions. Kissinger, Brzezinski and Madeleine Albright are taken to task for this as well. A few quotations from Leon Trotsky, by contrast, serve to present him as a visionary, and there is unfortunately also little or no real analysis of what made Marxism-Leninism fail in the end.
    But in short, THE CLASH OF FUNDAMENTALISMS is a very valuable book for those who want to look beyond the scare mongering of myopic politicians and sensationalist media. In addition to that, is Tariq Ali an entertaining writer as well.
    104 people found this helpful
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  • Bob K
    5.0 out of 5 stars Inquiring minds will love it reactionaries- not so much.
    Reviewed in the United States on March 16, 2015
    Verified Purchase
    I would make this the first book taught in every history class. It is certainly the most informative book that I've read this year; and I read a lot of them. It was most interesting reading the Library Journal review above as anything that provokes that kind of reaction would make me want to read it. It's about time that we wake up to what is really going on with our country and this is an excellent place to start. Mr Ali is an engaging writer and the pages just flew by. I'm about 10 pages from the end and I'm going to read it again(and me with a stack of "to be read" books on my desk, ah, well). there is much to learn from this book.Inquiring minds will love it reactionaries- not so much.
    3 people found this helpful
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  • Christopher Condon
    5.0 out of 5 stars " Middle Eastern Politics" , Tariq Ali the Prophet.
    Reviewed in the United States on March 8, 2015
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    Tariq Ali along with Robert Fisk are the two writers on " Middle Eastern Politics " that have lifted " The Mist"on what has become an ever confusing Real Politik
    Effecting our understanding of where forces such as Alqueda and ISIS have been sporn.
    One person found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

  • SunriseSuperman
    5.0 out of 5 stars Good quality book
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 29, 2019
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    Good quality book
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  • Naman
    5.0 out of 5 stars Very detailed explanation of America's intrusion in the Islamic countries ...
    Reviewed in India on March 3, 2016
    Verified Purchase
    Very detailed explanation of America's intrusion in the Islamic countries and the conditions that it created which ultimately led to 9/11.
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  • anna cottis
    5.0 out of 5 stars Good book
    Reviewed in France on March 12, 2014
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    Really interesting, and very clarifying about the history and present of the Islamic and Arab worlds. And well written too.
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  • camac
    5.0 out of 5 stars Intelligent, thorough and very readable
    Reviewed in Spain on May 3, 2013
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    This is what scholarship should be - informative and extensive from a life time of
    study from an intelligent and interested mind. If you want to know why the Muslims
    are angry, read this. But it isn't a polemic, just straight history.
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  • Vardharajan
    3.0 out of 5 stars Not impressed with the quality!!
    Reviewed in India on November 30, 2019
    Verified Purchase
    Not yet started reading. Only reviewing about the quality of the book and price.
    The book they sent seems like an old one. The MRP mentioned is ₹295. But I don't know why they are selling for such high prices.
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    Vardharajan
    3.0 out of 5 stars Not impressed with the quality!!
    Reviewed in India on November 30, 2019
    Not yet started reading. Only reviewing about the quality of the book and price.
    The book they sent seems like an old one. The MRP mentioned is ₹295. But I don't know why they are selling for such high prices.
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