Muslim Revolt: A Journey Through Political Islam

"We fail to understand Islam," writes Roger Hardy in the introduction to this book, "and we are paying a high price for our failure." The Muslim Revolt explains, in layman's language, a phenomenon that still seems to madden and perplex both the public and the policy-makers. In setting out to demystify Islamism and the forces that drive it, Hardy suggests that for the last two hundred years Muslims have been in revolt against Western domination--and against the failures and disappointments of modernisation. The book takes the form of a journey. Drawing on his travels and encounters as a journalist over the last thirty years, the author explains the political role of Islam in particular countries and regions--Egypt, Iran, Pakistan, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, south-east Asia, Europe--while at the same time telling the story of Islamism from its origins in the era of European colonialism to the emergence of Al-Qaeda and the global jihadists of today. In a challenging conclusion, Hardy warns that without a subtler grasp of Islamism and its discontents, the West will lose its much-vaunted battle for Muslim "hearts and minds."