Field: Politics, Sociology
Title: Islam and Secularism in the Middle East
Authors: John L. Esposito, Azzam Tamimi & other contributors
Publication: Hurst & Company, London 2002
ISBN: 1-85065-541-3
Rating: 3/5
Level: Advanced
Reviewed by: Safwan

Eleven well-written article compiled, this book presents to the readers a wide range of issues and discussions on the relatively new and very much controversial world dogma; secularism. This ideology, or religion (as some argued), has always claimed to be the sole promoter of material advances, modernization, civilization, democracy and human rights. Such claim, however, is unequivocally rebutted and trashed by this book and countless others.

Historical facts alone would argue against the picture of a sacrosanct secularism. When it claimed to be the proponent of democracy, we have helplessly witnessed how they toppled the Islamic Liberation Front (Algeria) and Refah Party (Turkey) despite them being elected by the people. On top of that, they have painted a false picture of the incompatibility of Islam and democracy; a depiction true only about themselves.

Secularism, an advanced form of laicism, is a product of the West, and only suitable for such people. We, ‘the Rest’, do not share their history of being oppressed by a group of ecclesiastics claiming to be intermediaries between us and our Creator, thus granting themselves the status of infallibility, half-mortal, or godly. In fact, Islam has been protecting Muslims from tyrannies, authoritarianism and obscurantism until the moment it was foolishly abandoned. Unlike the Western experience of Church oppression, under the banner of Islam modernism was and is preached by countless esteemed thinkers like Rifa’a al-Tahtawi, Khairuddin al-Tunisi, Jamaluddin al-Afghani, Abdel Rahman al-Kawakibi, Muhammad Abduh, Rashid Rida, and Rachid al-Gannouchi.

In fact, John Keane and other authors found perilous limitations within the ideology. Keane argued that it is far from possible to replace certainty of religiosity with existential uncertainty. It’s affinity with political despotism and corruption is also a major concern for many people until today. Perhaps this is why, according to Berger, Islam and Evangalism is on the rise in many parts of the contemporary world.

Helplessly, secularism is bombarded with heaps of philosophical arguments that fail to agree with it. While presenting itself as a champion of drawing a line between public and private life, it actually penetrates deepest into our private sphere- as told by the undeniable experience of civilians in the West. By making the world godless and reducing man to natural matter, it is unclear whether our dignity and rights will still be retained. It advocates nature at the expense of God, but ironically men, as claimed to be the product of the former, never cease to conquer and rule over its ‘creator’. The impossibility reaches its peak as the ‘immanent’ man creates another logos and thus dualism and polarity, which culminates into the incumbent assimilation and annihilation of one or the other.

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Field: Contemporary issues, Sociology
Title: The Power of Israel in the United States
Author: James Petras
Publication: Clarity Press, Inc. 2006
ISBN: 0-932863-51-5
Rating: 4/5
Level: Intermediate
Reviewed by: Safwan

In almost two hundred pages, James Petras seeks to enlighten readers, especially Americans, on how he believes his country has been nodding to Israel’s orders. In this relatively brief work, the American Professor of Sociology has laid copious evidence and facts, from which he worked his theory out, of which many have found it in better harmony with truth and contemporary reality.

The pre-assessment starts as he reviewed and makes readers ponder the Palestine issue; how Zionists have been intractably belligerent, the many international laws let alone human rights it has ignored, and the astonishingly ‘dynamic’ stand the US held on democracy in Gaza. He did not miss mentioning the fact that 60 and 35 percent of democratic and labour party’s funding comes from affluent Jewish pro-Zionist organizations, rendering any candidate from these parties an incumbent serviceman to Israeli interest.

On the Big Oil theory, Professor Petras have found some major inconsistencies. He discloses about most American companies’ interest in establishing good rapport and business ties with the middle east, and that the last thing they would want is instability in that region. With the Iraq invasion, dubbed by many as the US’ greed for oil, ironically not one US company has benefited from such gruesome act. Instead, facts tell us the opposite: they directly and immediately suffer a great deal of losses- in fact, the whole world was affected.

The writer, all along this work, tries to put forward his evidence-supported theory of Israel’s power in the US. It is Israel who largely benefits from Iraq’s power vacuum, which used to be its real threat only a few years back. The nature of Iraq’s war itself is self-explanatory; universities bombed, libraries raided, hospitals destroyed, citizens massacred, and intellectuals assassinated- to leave Iraq disabled for a ‘safe’ number of years, or even better, never to stand again.

The presence of Zionist Firsters like Wolfowitz, Abrams, and Feith (to name but a few) as top-ranked officials in the Pentagon ensures the perfusion of Israeli interest- on top of the diehard lobby they could and are mustering. Even the CIA is struggling to win the infamous Zionist-oriented OSP (Office of Special Plans) in the race to supply intelligence to the presidency. In the writer’s words, “it’s a war within”.

Professor Petras continued filling the pages with more facts contradicting the Jewish-controlled media propaganda, covering Lebanon War, Iran nuclear threat, terrorism, suicide bombers, Israeli betrayal of America, etc. He ends the book with countering the arguments from a celebrated professor’s theses, whose work denies the existence of Israeli Lobby in the American administration.

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