Arab Awakening and Islamic Revival: The Politics of Ideas in the Middle East (Google eBook)

Martin Seth Kramer

Transaction Publishers, Dec 31, 2011 - Political Science - 305 pages

Over the past decade, the political ground beneath the Middle East has shifted. Arab nationalism the political orthodoxy for most of this century has lost its grip on the imagination and allegiance of a new generation. At the same time, Islam as an ideology has spread across the region, and "Islamists" bid to capture the center of politics. Most Western scholars and experts once hailed the redemptive power of Arabism. Arab Awakening and Islamic Revival is a critical assessment of the contradictions of Arab nationalism and Islamic fundamentalism, and the misrepresentation of both in the West.

The first part of the book argues that Arab nationalism--the so-called Arab awakening--bore within it the seeds of its own failure. Arabism as an idea drew upon foreign sources and resources. Even as it claimed to liberate the Arabs from imperialism it deepened intellectual dependence upon the West's own romanticism and radicalism. Ultimately, Arab nationalism became a force of oppression rather than liberation, and a mirror image of the imperialism it defied. Kramer's essays together form the only chronological telling and the at fully documented postmortem of Arabism. The second part of the book examines the similar failings of Islamism, whose ideas are Islamic reworkings of Western ideological radicalism. Its effect has been to give new life to old rationales for oppression, authoritarianism, and sectarian division.

Arab Awakening and Islamic Revival provides an alternative view of a century of Middle Eastern history. As the region moves fitfully past ideology, Kramer's perspective is more compelling than at any time in the past-in Western academe no less than among many in the Middle. This book will be of interest to sociologists, political scientists, economists, and Middle East specialists.

Contents

• Mistaken Identity: 19
• The Passions of Martin Hartmann: 63
• The Sharifian Propaganda of Eugene Jung: 87
• The Arab Nation of Shakib Arslan: 103
• Ambition Arabism and George Antonius: 111
• Jean Genet and Palestine: 125
• Americas Arabists: 133
• Islam is the Power of the Future: 141
• Khomeinis Messengers in Mecca: 161
• Syrias Alawis and Shi ism: 189
• The Calculus of Jihad: 209
• Sacrifice and SelfMartyrdom in Shiite Lebanon: 231
• France Held Hostage: 245
• Islam and the West including Manhattan: 255
• Islam vs Democracy: 265

Popular passages

Page 1 - ... democracy, laissez-faire economics, transnational industrial and commercial linkages, social change, and intellectual questioning. If one needed an example of the importance of cultural attitudes in explaining a society's response to change, contemporary Islam provides it.‎

About the author

Martin Kramer is director of the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University. A past fellow of the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, he has taught at the University of Chicago, Cornell University, and Georgetown University. He is the author and editor of several books, including Islam Assembled; Shi'ism, Resistance and Revolution; Middle Eastern Lives; and Hezbollah's Vision of the West, and his articles and reviews have appeared in Commentary, The New Republic, Daedalus, and the New York Times.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Arab Awakening and Islamic Revival: The Politics of Ideas in the Middle East; Volume 1 of Middle East in Transition
• Author: Martin Seth Kramer
• Edition: reprint
• Publisher: Transaction Publishers, 2011
• ISBN: 1412817390, 9781412817394
• Length: 305 pages
• Subjects: History / Middle East / General; Political Science / General; Political Science / International Relations / General