Beyond Belief

To be fair, the post-9/11 period has produced some deeply valuable studies. Perhaps the most important is Princeton academic Bernard Lewis’s What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response. It explores not just the “cruel divide” between the West and Islamic societies, to use Fouad Ajami’s phrase, but the anguished reaction of the Islamic world at being overtaken, overshadowed and dominated by the West. Although conceived and mostly written before 9/11, it is a remarkable example of scholarship that meets the challenge of academic excellence and policy relevance.

Dilip Hiro’s War Without End is a mixed package. Parts of the book are thoughtful, almost profound, in their analysis, and yet there are chapters which often reduce the volume to the status of a quickie. As a matter of fact, War Without End is three books in one. Part one, or should we say book one, provides a short history of Islam from the birth of Prophet Muhammad to the end of the Ottoman empire. This is a fast-paced, generally well-written narrative, useful for the uninformed, but of little interest to those who have gone through other, more scholarly narratives of Islamic history.

Part two is easily the meat of the book. It deals with three fundamentalist movements and states: Egypt and particularly the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood; Saudi Arabia, descried as the oldest fundamentalist state; Afghanistan, where fundamentalism was established with American backing. The competition between Iran and Saudi Arabia for influence in the Islamic world, and their respective machinations, although well known, make for compelling reading.

The third part of the book is probably the weakest, probably because it deals with contemporary events. It begins with the bombing of the US embassies and concludes with the on-going war on terrorism. There is a section on Kashmir, and the near India-Pakistan war this summer, which adds little to our knowledge of events or the merit of the book.

In short, Hiro’s main argument is this: the main causes of terrorism are the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the US military presence in Saudi Arabia and the fate of Iraq. By implication, he seems to suggest that if these issues were resolved, terrorism — especially of the Islamic militant variety — could be eliminated. Now, if only it were that simple!