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83 of 112 people found the following review helpful:
Real history of fundamentalism, April 7, 2002
Tariq Ali puts forth a history of Islamic fundamentalism, from Muhammad onward, through the emergence of Wahhabism (Saudi Arabia's state religion, once Afghanistan's) from its inspirer Muhammad Ibn Abdul Wahhab in the 18th century under Ottoman rule, through the present. In between, Ali sandwiches a discussion of Islamic heresy, including the Islamic world's most prominent medieval intellectuals. What's more, he also takes on American imperialism as another form of religious fundamentalism, with its history of domination, manipulation, and extermination, and uses the resulting paradigm of a "clash of fundamentalisms" to explain the current situation in the Middle East and in South Asia. Ali takes on a discussion of the Iranian Revolution, of the Iran-Iraq war, of the history of Pakistan, and of Palestine, amongst other things. The result is detailed, informative, stimulating, and honest. Ali ends with a "Letter to a Young Muslim," where he confronts the viewpoints of desperate Muslims living under US proxy regimes throughout the world. I can hardly wait to read the next hundred denunciations of this book, for all that it is chock-full of blood-boiling heresies from beginning to end. A must-read.
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17 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
An Honest, Contextual, and Unsentimental Explanation of 9/11, November 14, 2002
An unashamed secular proponent of Enlightenment ideas, Tariq Ali provides a voice of refreshing realism, intelligence, and wit that sharply contrasts the expanding chorus of religious zealots who have staked out both sides of the 9/11 issue. Ali grew up in a leftist family in Pakistan during the volatile period of Partition and its immediate aftermath. Having witnessed the grim results of religious strife in his native Lahore, Ali rejected the notion of cultural superiority and the study of Islam at an early age. In "Clash of Fundamentalisms" Ali places the events of 9/11 in sharp historical perspective. While his views may not be as comforting as the official U.S. government explanation of why 9/11 took place, they are more realistic and provide a better framework for understanding and preventing further acts of terror. The first three quarters of this book provide a brief and lucid history of the Western occupation and manipulation of the Middle East in the past two hundred years, most notably by Britain and then by its successor, the United States. In his chapter on Saudi Arabia, Ali demonstrates how the West reinstalled the Faud family that continues to rule Saudi Arabia today. The Faud family are practitioners of Wahhabism, an extreme fundamentalist sect of Islam whose repressive nature is comparable to the brand of Christian fundamentalism practiced by Jerry Falwell. By reinstalling the house of Faud in Saudi Arabia Britain, and then the United States ensured that it would experience brutal repression and no possibility for development. Ali characterizes Pakistan as a failed state that has passed from one military dictatorship to another and that is rife with Islamic fundamentalism largely as the result of American sponsorship during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Pakistan also has nuclear weapons and fundamentalist penetration of the military (and its resulting access to those weapons) is a matter of time. In fact, Ali's perspective on other Middle Eastern nations could easily merit a book for each. Afghanistan was on the path to modernization and self-determination before being utterly destroyed by the United States and the Soviet Union. Far from providing Israel with enhanced security, the victory in the 1967 war committed Israel to a path of occupation, aggression, and brutality that ultimately left it more vulnerable and more hated. And, in the case of Iran, Ali warns the United States that it is squandering an opportunity and courting disaster. Most young Iranians have little or no recollection of life under the Shah but possess powerful hatred and resentment of the ruling Islamic clergy. To link these people to an imagined "access of evil" is to turn a reservoir of potential support into one of guaranteed hostility. Ali brings his arguments home in the book's final chapter that is also titled "Clash of Fundamentalism". Here Ali correctly points out that there is nothing new about 9/11, since the modern West has systematically murdered civilians to achieve its aims, it is only new to the United States. While Ali in no way supports the murder of American civilians on 9/11 he states that it is obscene to argue that those lives were somehow worth more than the twenty thousand whom Putin murdered in Grozny, or the countless thousands of civilians America murdered in Vietnam. Ali introduces us to the concept of Imperial fundamentalism (America is right no matter what) and points out that the ensuing clash of fundamentalisms between American and Islamic ideologues is a retreat from the progressive ideas of the Enlightenment and an attempt to reverse the process of social development, essentially moving backward toward an ideal moment that never really existed. Ali is as unsparing in his criticism of Islamic fundamentalism and Zionism as he is of America's imperial and Christian fundamentalism. Among other things, Ali puts pundits such as Francis Fukuyama (The End of History) and Samuel Huntington (Clash of Civilizations) in their place. Fukuyama's notion that history has ended because Western liberal democracy has achieved a state of permanent triumph, is according to Ali, a ridiculous concept that Fukuyama has constantly had to "readjust" in the face of mounting contradictory events. Ali correctly characterizes the Huntington thesis as an overly broad "us and them" perspective that ignores the fact that 9/11 and similar events have their roots in politics (imperial occupation and subject state resistance) not cultural, religious or civilization differences. Ali challenges both Americans and their foes to avoid the comfort of cliché and simple mindedness when examining 9/11. He challenges Americans to stop viewing this event as one of inexplicable and insane victimization and to see it for what it was, a brutal counterstrike by imperial subject people against the mother country. But Ali also criticizes the immense world support of 9/11 including numerous Europeans, Asian, Latinos and Africans (some of whom live in the U.S.) who have publicly expressed pleasure in the fact that finally "they" (i.e. Americans) were being attacked instead of doing the attacking. But aside from its symbolic significance, Ali believes that 9/11 failed to accomplish what the terrorists had hoped and only strengthened American resolve as well as the standing of the American president. Similarly, he points out that bombing Afghanistan may have momentarily satisfied the American appetite for revenge but has only expanded the reservoir of hatred and hostility toward America. Sighting Chalmers Johnson's book "Blowback" Ali warns that the real consequences of the War on Terror are not detectable now but will be felt in years to come. For this reason it is critical that everyone start examining this situation realistically, not merely in terms of cliché, symbolism, and zealotry.
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20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
Engaging reading, substantial insights, thought-provoking!, July 28, 2003
One can't tell a book from it's cover, but in this case, at least one can get an idea that the author has a sense of humor! Perhaps it may be well that such a serious topic as terrorism and religious fundamentalism be approached with a some humor. At the same time, it is a serious book, one of the few books on terrorism that actually delve into the roots of it all to discern a solution. The book is quite voluminous, nearly 330 pages, packed with information and deep analysis, with many notes. The author's brilliant writing style makes it an incredibly difficult book to put down. I ended up finishing the whole book over the Christmas / New Year holiday, with many sleepless nights, that is. The book is divided into 4 major parts: one on the early history of Islam; one on the last 100 years of relations with the West, marked by colonialism and upheavals; a special part focusing on South Asia (India and Pakistan) the region about which the author is most familiar; and the last part on the United States and it's relations with the Islamic world. The book is fascinating not only because it draws upon the author's deep knowledge of the history of Islam, but also because he punctuates it with poetry and quotations from diverse literary works over the ages. The book exhibits a deep understanding of the subject, and posits a thesis directly confronting the much-touted "clash of civilizations" model. A major strength of this book, however, is that the author is daring enough not to stand with the crowd. While many intellectuals from the Muslim world do little to explain current events beyond laying the blame on the West, Tariq Ali is not afraid to look squarely at his own culture with the same critical eye he uses to examine Western imperialism. In this day and age, I would say this is a must-read!
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9 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
Read if you talk US policy or the Muslim world!, April 28, 2002
Someone once said "thinking is the hardest work there is -- which is why so few people do it." This book can be annoying and one can argue with the ideas, but it deserves applause because it makes you think! I value it far more than Huntington's work on the clash of civilizations -- if you read that you owe it to yourself to read this too! If you agree with everything in a book you problem wasted your time reading it and learned next to nothing. The cover with George Bush's "unauthorized" picture is alone worth the price. Far too much of what is said herein is likely to be true for the comfort of those who are happy with the pablum from the domestic Press. I wish Charlie Rose and others would just once in awhile invite such guests!
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36 of 47 people found the following review helpful:
An excellent and courageous book, October 14, 2002
By A Customer
What makes this book so valuable is its integration of the history, culture and politics of the First, Second and Third Worlds and its attempt to use this as a global perspective for viewing the present crisis in relations between these different regions of the world. Tariq Ali was brought up in Muslim Pakistan. He was educated at Oxford University and he currently lives in the West. And an important aspect of his life-long work has been a study and fierce critique of the history of Stalinist "Communism". This book will be regarded as a classic in years to come. It is in the same superb class as Walter Rodney's "How Europe Underdeveloped Africa" and Eduardo Galeano's "Open Veins of Latin America". Ali has the courage to be critical of both the Islamic fundamentalist world, Stalinism and the imperial West--a brave man indeed. Everyone should read this book. Westerners seeking to understand why they are so hated in other parts of the world, and why they are under terrorist attack. Muslims wishing to understand the historical and political origins of the Islamic fundamentalist nightmare that currently engulfs them. And people in the the former Eastern bloc wishing to understand why Stalinism collapsed and why the struggle for genuine democratic socialism--the world described by John Lennon in his beautiful song "Imagine"--still goes on today. In reply to Holmes' review above, when Ali writes that Yeltsin's market policies gave Russians "the most harrowing ordeal" of the post-war era he is not glossing over the very real totalitarianism that existed under Stalinism. Ali has been, and still is, a long-standing, and well known, campaigner against Stalinism. But how much democracy is there in the Russia of today? It was, after all, Yelstin, not Stalin, who shelled the Russian Parliament building not so long ago. Russia is now ruled by an assortment of crooks and robber barons. How are we to explain the current widespread nostalgia for the Stalin years? Why is the Communist Party still the largest party in Russia? Answer: while there was no real democracy in Russia under Stalin or Yeltsin at least in the Stalin years everyone had a job, free health care and free schooling. Today there is widespread poverty and the infant mortality rate has soared.
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7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
Read it for a non-American view of the world, July 28, 2003
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.
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14 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
Badly Needed, July 24, 2002
Now that treasury deficits, along with a slew of Constitutional guarantees, are being thrown into the so-called war on terrorism, we should get a better look at whom we're bombing this month. Variously defined as swarthy guys with beards or swarthy guys without beards, depending on whether they're about to grab a jetliner, they all have two things in common. They're fanatics and they hail from the world of Islam. To most Americans, that is an easy reach. Our popular villians have always had a swarthy cast and a foreign pedigree. Moreover the slender-faced, goateed bin Laden bears a striking resemblance to that Oriental mastermind of yesteryear: the fictional Dr. Fu Manchu who also specialized in attacking seats of Western power, the empire of Great Britain. Being too valuable as weapons, these stereotypes survive like bad seeds ready to sprout when properly nourished. Unfortunately, the blood of 3,000 innocents in New York City has provided plenty of growth potential. Ali's timely book attacks some of the myths currently sprouting in popular belief. The focus is mainly historical, with an eye toward the history of Islam as well as the recent history of the Middle East. The portraits that emerge are a lot less monolithic than Huntington's fashionable clash of civilizations would have it. The Muslim world appears as fractured politically and culturally as counterparts in the West. Moreover, the author's reminiscence on life in Pakistan puts human faces on the abstractions of nation and religion, bringing the fabled Other of Occidental lore into much-needed focus. The book's overall effect, however, is more scattered than concentrated, but no less valuable for its many insights. The chapter on Kashmir and its world of intrigue remains a topical standout. Ali writes more as a wide-ranging intellectual than as an academic scholar, and while this work may not be the last word on tumult in the Middle East, it poses an excellent introduction. And for those ready to dismiss the author's clash-of-fundamentalisms thesis, recall John Kenneth Galbraith's trenchant remarks on neo-liberalism's theology of the marketplace, no less timely now than thirty years ago. Indeed, religions come in many godheads, be they an all-powerful invisible spirit or an all-harmonizing invisible hand.
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36 of 48 people found the following review helpful:
A refreshing riposte to conventional thinking on 9-11, June 9, 2002
Tariq Ali's book, The Clash of Fundamentalisms, is necessary reading for everyone. For radicals it provides an excellent history of U.S. imperial exploits and of ideological and political conflict in the Middle East and Central and South Asia. For those of other political stripes, centrists and rightists, it provides a refreshing and unrestrained response to the predominating views about the meaning and response to the events of September 11, 2001.Ali notes how Francis Fukuyama's thesis on the "End of History," while claiming the moral and economic superiority of liberal capitalism and its triumph over bureaucratic "socialism," didn't provide much in the way of direction for U.S. hegemony following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilizations filled that gap. Huntington's book, partly a response to Fukuyama, argued not for a golden age ahead, but continuing conflict derived from apparently irreducible cultural differences. Thus Western, and particularly U.S., intervention would still be very much needed to defend American values such as "individualism, liberalism, constitutionalism, human rights, equality, liberty, the rule of law, democracy, free markets" (quoted in Ali, p. 273). Huntington's book therefore provided a rationalization for a continued and predominant role of the U.S. in world affairs. September 11 was "proof" for that thesis. Ali's book subjects this thesis to a withering critique, and this is the main reason for his choice of title, something that others seem not to have grasped. Ali carries out his critique by making two points while presenting a broad political and religious history of the Middle East and Central and South Asia. First, he shows us that Islam and the cultures with which is Islam is associated are anything but monolithic or homogeneous. Islam has had its Luthers as well as its Savonarolas. It has not always been hostile to Western (Aristotle) or even rational and scientific thinking. Its politics have been more varied than most Anglo-American countries, comprising the most radical communists as well as producing leftist and far-rightist nationalisms. Second, Ali shows that, tragically, and in far too many cases, U.S. foreign intervention in these regions has abetted and financed the rise of the most reactionary elements "against communism or progressive/secular nationalism. Often these were hardline religious fundamentalists: the Muslim Brotherhood against Nasser in Egypt; the Sarekat-i-Islam against Sukarno in Indonesia, the Jamat-e-Islam against Bhutto in Pakistan and, later, Osama bin Laden and friends against the secular communist Najibullah [in Afghanistan]" (p. 275). With the exception of Indonesia, Ali's book is, among other things, a historical presentation of these interventions. Thus, U.S. imperialism, far form necessarily defending itself from an alien and hostile Islamic culture, is at the very least partly responsible for the ascendancy of fundamentalist Islam. Moreover, not only has the U.S. failed to promote democracy, liberty, equality, etc. in these regions, it has actually stifled it. There are many, including at least one reviewer below, who will disagree with Ali's conclusions, particularly his charges of U.S. imperialism. What these persons want to believe is that U.S. foreign policy really is about those lofty principles that Huntington lists. Ali provides his own response to these critics: "The historic compromise with integrity that this form of Americophilia entails transmutes the friendly critic into a slave of power, always wanting to please. S/he becomes an apologist, expecting the Empire to actually deliver on its rhetoric. Alas, the Empire, whose fundamental motivation today is economic self-interest, may sometimes disappoint the most recent converts to its cause. They feel betrayed, refusing to accept that what has been betrayed is their illusions. What they dislike most is to be reminded of the sour smell of history" (p. 257). Hence, the furious and often ad hominem attacks volleyed against Ali. What is the meaning of September 11? It is, in the prescient words of Chalmers Johnson, "blowback." "'Blowback' is shorthand for saying that a nation reaps what it sows, even if it does not fully know or understand what it has sown. Given its wealth and power, the United States will be a prime recipient in the foreseeable future of all of the more expectable forms of blowback, particularly terrorit attacks against Americans in and out of the armed forces anywhere on earth, including within the United States" (quoted in Ali, p. 292). Read this book for a case study of this phenomenon.
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5 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
Excellent depth and breadth, August 30, 2003
Probably one of my best books since I read "Guns Germs and Steal" by Jard Diamond.This book clearly lays-out the very complex dynamics of the current conflict. I was looking for a book like this and I found one! Highly recommend it..its long but it is scholarly, fun and detailed with facts...
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4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
The reality of fundamentalism - imperial and islamic, December 5, 2002
This book should be required reading for everyone who 'thinks' they know what's going on in the Middle East and especially the so-called 'war on terror' in Iraq. Dirty deals have been going on for centuries and the most recent have been done by the US and the UK only to further their own ends. Deals which have cost countless thousands of innocent lives. Get the inside story and read this book.
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