THE ARAB PREDICAMENT Political Thought Practice Islam

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FROM THE BACK COVER:

"This sparkling book should become compulsory reading for anyone who attempts to analyze the Middle East situation. This book is an outstanding accomplishment. Arabs both deserve and urgently need it. Any of the rest of us who are interested in political ideas will find it enthralling." - New Society

"With close analysis and considerable literary grace, Lebanese scholar Ajami accomplishes what so many outside (and inside) observers have failed to do: He produces a clear, coherent picture of the ideologies and movements that have swept through the Arab world in recent times." - Wilson Quarterly

"Certainly the most wide-ranging and eloquent of the books considered here [a survey of nine titles on the Middle East]." - The Economist

"Every now and then one comes across a book on the Middle East that is a joy to read. The Arab Predicament is one such book -- not because it is 'right' or because it tells a true story but because it has literary quality, contains interesting insights and, while controversial, is always stimulating. This is an excellent book, a pleasure to read." - The Middle East

"... bears comparison to Edward Said's controversial Orientalism (1978). Where Said raises a number of key epistemological issues relevant to comparative political analysis, Ajami offers much of value to those concerned with political elites, class analysis, political development, religiopolitics, and revolution." - The American Political Science Review

" ... Ajami understands Arab politics; though angry and impatient with it short-comings, he empathizes with it; though passionate, he writes with insight and clarity. This book is a pleasure to read and important to contemplate." - Middle East Journal

"A brilliant exercise in intellectual history and a searching enquiry into the political and social malaise of the Arab world." - Foreign Affairs

Professor Fouad Ajami is currently Director of Mideast Studies at the School for Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University. He is a frequent contributor to Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The Nation, The New York Times Book Review, and Le Figaro. Ajami was born in Amoun, a village in southern Lebanon.

CONTENTS:

Preface
Notes to the nonspecialist reader
Introduction

One's world as it really is

• The radical sensibility
• The Ba'th Party: a retrospect
• The Islamic response: radical fundamentalism
• Conservative fundamentalism

Egypt as state, as Arab mirror

• The legacy reassessed
• The Egyptian search
• The ways of the pharoah, the ways of others
• The push of the desert, the pull of the Mediterranean
• Egypt as mirror, as state

Fractured tradition: the claims of authenticity, the realities of dependence

• The "revolution" contained
• The dominant order's brief triumph
• The question of authenticity and collaboration
• The rulers' Islam, Islam of the ruled
• The ways of the ancestors, the ways of the world

Notes
Index

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