Confronting Political Islam

University of Virginia professor Owen (The Clash of Ideas in World Politics) aims with this comparative history to lend perspective to the Muslim world's contemporary political aims. Secularists in the West underestimate Islamism's global force, he begins, yet Islam is not a monolith. Owen considers past ideological struggles and explores the nature of the ideological state, using such examples as Napoleonic France and Maoist China. Watch Egypt, Turkey and Iran, he says, since how each of these states turns will signal Islam's political future. And don't overestimate Arab secularism. "Even moderate Islamists are Islamists, not liberals," Owen stresses, to explain why the secularism of an Ataturk or Nasser is simply not feasible in the future. By this reading, U.S. relations with the Muslim world cannot be as cordial as with the Anglosphere or France, and Americans should not expect too much in the way of commonality. Overall, Owen is generous, rational and balanced, more perhaps than the subject can bear. In the current world of racial and religious strife, nuclear fears, and expanding terrorist capacity, some of his historical connections seem far-fetched. While Owen clearly wants to transcend the present Islamist-secularist struggle, he is also astute enough to understand the vast real-world differences that block the resolution of conflict. (Nov.)