God of Battles: Holy Wars of East and West - Softcover

Críticas

‘Excellent. Should be required reading for the Middle East desks in the State Department and the Foreign Office’
Andrew Wheatcroft, Sunday Times

‘Partner’s conclusions will make it impossible for his readers ever again to swallow the bromides of waffling politicians or saloon-bar know-alls’
Frank McLynn, Glasgow Herald

‘Admirable. As an appeal to understanding it is greatly to be commended’
David Edgar, Irish Times

Reseña del editor

‘Required reading for anyone wishing to think more clearly about what Islam, and its fundamentalists, mean for the contemporary world’ A.C. Grayling, Financial Times

Peter Partner examines the ways in which the concept of holy war – the jihad of the East and the crusade of the West – came to acquire its symbolic power, and how this still affects the modern world. He shows how the ideal of the crusade permeated Western attitudes and beliefs, and discusses the modernity or otherwise of today’s Islamic fundamentalist movements, which so alarm the Western world. He reveals how present-day Islamic reformers have actually borrowed the vocabulary of fundamentalism from Western sources, and discusses ways in which they have interpreted (and occasionally put into practice) the idea of holy war. Above all, God of Battles investigates the reasons behind the fear which Islamic fundamentalism excites in the West, and warns against allowing views that ultimately derive from eleventh-century propaganda to influence us today.