(Sunday Times-UK) Malise Ruthven - The central thesis of Efraim Karsh's provocative new book, Islamic Imperialism: A History, is that Islam is a millennarian faith in which politics and religion are inextricably bound together. Although they differ in ideological approach, secular pan-Arabists and the Islamists who now oppose them hold a common imperial outlook. This dream remains at the forefront of the social memory or imagination of the Arab-Muslim world, nurturing irredentist fantasies from Xinjiang to Spain. The terrorist attacks that have destroyed so many lives in cities far removed from its conflicts - in New York, Madrid, London, Istanbul - can indeed be seen as the outcome of a frustrated will-to-power fuelled by apocalyptic fantasies based on an idealized vision of a brilliant imperial past.
2006-06-23 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive