Reducing Islamic fundamentalism to an expression of terrorism while ignoring the grievances may only deepen conflict, not resolve it, maintains Beverley Milton-Edwards in her introduction. Therefore she – a reader in politics and international affairs in the School of Politics at Queen’s University, Belfast – has researched the development of the problem since World War II. In chapter one, she summarizes the history of Islam, touching on the expansion of Islam, the global rising of Europe, the age of empire building in Muslim countries and the era of national independence. In chapter two, she examines the movements of national independence and secular rule in a variety of Muslim countries and the role of the Islamists in helping to shape the political discourse during the modern age. In chapter three, she addresses the fallout of secular dictatorships that denied freedom and democracy to the masses. Here she concentrates on the stirrings of revivalism and fundamentalist thinking in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In chapter five, she appraises the emergence of a new global political order and its impact on Islamism. In chapter six, the devastating consequences of a new cultural hegemony on Muslims are examined after alQaeda’s attacks on America. Finally, in chapter seven she offers her conclusions.
Rather than being geographically specific and focusing on the regional heartland of Islam – the Middle East – the focus of her book is the whole Muslim world, the countries where the majority of the population are Muslims. Suffice it to say, during her chosen period of time, since 1945, the citizens of these countries have been subject to a range of forces: foreign rule and occupation, movements for independence, rising nationalism, secularism, growing Islamist tendencies, reform, revolution and repression. The reader might argue that all these factors were already at work following World War I, and so the reason for taking the end of World War II as a starting point for this study remains unclear. That said, I will discuss three of the author’s major insights.
