by Jonathan Raban
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by John le Carré
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by Andrew Marr
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by Martin Amis
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by Antony Beevor
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Product Description
Product Description
Struck by memories of his own adolsecent atheism, Jonathan Raban felt he had some understanding of why young people suffering from cultural alienation and moral uncertainty might turn to a backward-looking version of Islam as one way to resist the upheavals of modernity. Yet this understanding was largely -- and noticably -- absent from any government or political discussions of the issue. In My Holy War, Raban reflects on the Bush administration's manipulation of the threat of terrorism to undermine civil rights, emphasizing the US failure to understand the history of the Middle East, and explaining the region's shifting and complex loyalties of religion and ethnicity. He traces the continuing support for a disastrous war to the legacy of American Puritanism: the tendency of Americans to be inspired by a religious fervour oblivious to history and reason. As such, My Holy War is a book most certainly written in a post 9/11 America, written in light of the war in Iraq, in a new era of religious ferocity, and in the context of modern-day jihad.
From the Back Cover
What does America’s ‘war on terror’ and new era of religious and patriotic intensity look like to an Englishman living in Seattle?
‘Raban eloquently argues . . . that the Bush administration's bellicose unilateralism abroad and burgeoning security state at home were neither the necessary nor best response to the attacks of 2001. Rather, the administration capitalized on an exceptional moment of national unity to take the country down a dangerously antidemocratic, Manichean path that wedded widespread religious faith to a right-wing imperial agenda. As a potent prose stylist and keen observer of the American scene, Raban charts with rare luminosity the changes and widening fissures in American society from 9/11 through 7/7, which makes revisiting even topics like Howard Dean's presidential race worthwhile. Several thoughtful and compelling chapters grapple, meanwhile, with the largely Western and entirely modern origins of Islamist extremism, drawing on Raban's demonstrated familiarity with the Middle East . . . The book's defence of reason over militant irrationalism, resting as it does on the author's formidable talent for insight and analogy, will inspire readers with the underlying issues at play in this dizzying, event-crammed historical moment’ Publishers Weekly
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