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Title: Islamic Imperialism : A History
ISBN: 0300106033
Author:
Efraim Karsh
Publicate Date: 2006-04-26
Publish: 2006-04-26
List Price: $30.00
Average Customer Rating: 4.0
Format: Hardcover
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $2.97
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| Customer Review: |
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1: Islamic Imperialism is REQUIRED reading
A religion of peace, my eye! This book carefully and methodically disabuses one of the notion that this "religion" is based on anything but greed and avarice. It is clear that from its beginning fourteen centuries ago the sole intent is to conquer the world, causing everyone to convert, submit, or die. Those who claim otherwise are blind to reality.
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2: Prof. Karsh's History
Prof. Karsh'e history of Islamic "imperialism" is an agenda-driven history of Islam with a single-minded focus on Muslim conquests described as flowing from Islamic religious teachings. At times, it reads like a political propoganda rather than objective history. Following Bernard Lewis, the author seeks to undersytand the current politics of the Muslim societies in the light of both Islamic theology and Islamic history, neglecting totally the realities of the modern period -- colonialism, nationalism, cold war, and global economic forces. A bad history and a worse politics!
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3: Islamic Imperialism
Islamic Imperialism by Efraim Karsh is a sweeping history of Islamic imperialism from Muhammad to Osama bin Laden. The book shows how non-Muslims, and even Muslims, have been subjected to the ambitions of an endless stream of brutal tyrants who appealed to Muhammad as justification for their own narcissistic, imperialist dreams.
The book is well documented and exceptionally well written by an expert on the subject. Every presidential candidate, every congressperson, and indeed, every American should place this book high on their reading list.
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4: expert misdirection with some tidbits of genuine history
I have seldom read such a blatantly one-sided piece of history writing. It is filled with small inaccuracies which make me question the truth of other small things I don't know from other sources. For example, the author asserts that the Janissaries were never defeated, that all challenges to their para-military authority were "nipped in the bud." Not so, they were famously crushed by the reigning Sultan in 1826.
The errors of omission are more egregious. The author gradually begs the question, which he never asks, "what's so different about this particular brand of imperialism besides its basis in Islam?" The answer is nowhere to be found in this book, despite the misdirection of focusing on Crusader princes as examplars of the total character of European imperialism. I am quite ready to accept that Islam contains a major strand of military conquest. But the mixing of religion and rapid, ruthless, exterminatory seizure of land has a long and ethnically varied history, beginning well before Islam, and extending to at least the conquest of North America (a drive that was explicitly tied to religion throughout, or does this somehow not count?)
The need to present only one side of an argument borders on hilarity (were the events concerned not so tragic in all directions) when the author turns his attention to modern day Iraq and its alleged connection to radical Islam. The existence of American foreign policy is acknowledged only very obliquely, and mostly as a way of casting Carter as a sort of Neville Chamberlain figure - is Bush supposed to be Churchill here?... we'll never know, because he is, staggeringly, HARDLY MENTIONED, nor are most of the neocon architects of post-realist middle East policy in Washington. It's one thing to say that Islam is more violent than not (it would take a better book, more of a social history than a military one, to delve thoughtfully into that question). It's quite another to assert that the role of European commerce and military adventurism is utterly irrelevant to the character of Arabic life today.
The simplest way to refute this argument is to reverse the roles. If the United States or Europe had been invaded and carved up, its economic assets divvied up to the highest bidders in unbreachable contracts, at terms highly unfavorable to citizens... well, we'd look at this a little differently, wouldn't we?
The early passages about Muhammed's undoubted anti-Semitism (or his pragmatic use of it, an unprovable distinction given the available sources) are compelling and disturbing, but they can be matched with countless incidents of unspeakable cruelty in the Western world, including those directed against Jews. There is nothing exceptional in the least about the Islamic use of state terror. Read accounts of executions and pogroms, through the Indian wars and slavery,
all the way up to the Holocaust and napalm and Pol Pot and Central African genocide. You can talk to actual living survivors if you try, and we seem to be in the business as a country now of creating more. Europe and the US, and many others, have just as much blood on our hands.
So one must ask... what's the goal here? It is clearly to misdirect us from any discussion of our own mistakes as a nation and a government and a culture. It is a long, relentless attempt to change the subject, and from the looks of some posts, it has succeeded for many.
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5: Brilliant, unbiased and convincing
...and I still only gave it three stars because it is one heck of a read. Maybe history is that dry but I had to really force myself through the pages.
On the other hand this book has changed the way I look at Islam and Arabism. It is profound and hard to refute. Even one of my most appreciated scholars, Edward Said, has found some well-documented criticism that I eventually succumbed to.
Many of my friends or acquaintances are Arabs and Muslims. I have always perceived their history through the eyes of apologist Karen Armstrong or the more serious thinkers of Said's caliber. But there is another side to the story and as empires go, it is ugly.
I find it hard to comment on all the details but eventually a picture emerges that is substantially critical without being slanderously Islamophobic. Maybe it is the dry presentation, devoid of much emotion which respected me as a reader to form my own opinion. Sometimes it reminded me of Noam Chomsky's writing style in works such as the Fateful Triangle which demands much of the reader. If you are looking for some entertaining quips and quotes or ravaging drama you probably will be disappointed.
Karsh should be taken with a grain of salt. His other works have received much criticism and his pro-Israeli bias leaves a bitter aftertaste. However, since this review is about this particular book I can only recommend it as a must-read, a far cry from the polemics that permeate the current discourse.
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