The Muslim Revolt : A Journey Through Political Islam

Offers the reader a subtler grasp of today's Islamic societies and their discontents, explaining how the autocratic policies of many states in the Middle East inadvertently bolster the popularity of political Islam. This work also explains the political role of Islam in particular countries and regions - Egypt, Iran, Pakistan, Sudan, and Europe.

''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''.