خلاصه ماشینی:
The rhetoric of the most ardent Muslim activists has been accepted at face value, and Islam has been identified as a revolutionary force with an axe to grind against the West.
Esposito, a leading expert on Islamic studies who has written prolifically on the relation of Islam to politics, provides a lucid examination of the roots of Muslims' activism and the Western response to it.
He places the attitude of Islamic movements towards the West in the context of the Muslim experience Book Reviews with sociopolitical change and Western attitudes towards Islam.
The analytical narrative deconstructs the Western view of Islam in a most original fashion, separating fact from fiction, legitimate grievance from cultural bias, and stereotypes and generalizations from the reality of the Muslim world.
Esposito contends that while there are Islamic movements that advocate violence, oppose the West, and follow the revolutionary path, they are by no means representative of the political attitudes of the majority of Muslims.
In similar vein, the West has identified its enemies in the Muslim world with Islamic fundamentalism in an arbitrary fashion, and again with the result of giving credence to the myth of Islam's imminent threat to the West.
In reality, the war was proof of the fact that the greater threat to world order was not Islam, but rather a secular dictator who once enjoyed the support of the West.
Finally, Esposito argues that by identifying all Islamic forces as revolutionary, the West has failed to appreciate the depth and breadth of Islamic activism.