Why They Don't Hate Us: Lifting the Veil on the Axis of Evil - Softcover
Mark LeVine wrote Why They Don't Hate Us because he was scared. Scared of the implications of an American foreign policy: policy founded on misinformation about both the historical and present-day Middle East and the people who live there. And angry because he has spent over fifteen years living in and researching the Middle East: a Middle East where the distinction between 'them' and 'us' has little basis in reality. Writing against the backdrop of the war on terror and the Bush administration's axis of evil, Why They Don't Hate Us uncovers a world behind the mask of the suicide bomber, where the battle against religious zealotry and the worst excesses of globalization might one day be fought by people on both sides, under the banner of an axis of empathy.
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From the Inside Flap:
On the 11th September 2001, a clash of civilisations that had been brewing for decades finally erupted, splitting the world in two. On one side, the forces of good, a coalition of the willing committed to promoting liberty and combating terror wherever it appears. On the other, the Axis of Evil, an unholy alliance of religious extremists who hate freedom and are prepared to go to any lengths to suppress it. United only by their mutual hatred and incomprehension, the West and the Muslim world can never be reconciled with one another. The end of history has come, and it is time to choose sides. You’re either with us, or you’re against us.
From the Back Cover:
Or at least, that’s what they want you to think...
Scholar, journalist, activist and musician Mark LeVine tells a different story. Drawn from a decade of research in eight languages across a dozen countries, Why They Don’t Hate Us is the true story of how globalization has impacted on real people across the Muslim world, from young headscarf-clad feminists to terrorist intellectuals, to rock bands willing to risk arrest and torture to play their music.
In a powerful and compelling study based on the most detailed analysis ever offered of cultural and economic globalization in the Middle East and North Africa, Professor LeVine launches a searing attack on the assumptions and prejudices that have long been taken for granted by both liberals and conservatives. There is no single amorphous ‘they’ – Muslims are every bit as diverse and contradictory as westerners – but this idea has allowed fundamentalists on both sides to exert control over their respective societies. The real barrier to greater understanding between the West and the Muslim world is not the ‘axis of evil’; it is the ‘axis of arrogance and ignorance’ that has infected commentators and policy makers across the political spectrum.
Part-history, part-economic treatise and part-travelogue, this ambitious and frequently entertaining work should be read by anyone who has asked themselves the familiar question "why do they hate us?" and wondered "what if they don’t?"
Mark LeVine is Associate Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History, Culture and Islamic Studies at the University of California, Irvine. For most of the last decade he has lived and worked in the Middle East, dodging terrorist bombs, standing against bulldozers and sharing the lives of the people who form the subject of his work. Historical consultant for the Oscar-nominated and double Emmy award-winning Promises documentary and a leading figure in the influential ‘culture jam’ movement, he has been extensively quoted in leading magazines and newspapers including the New York Times and Washington Post, and has made numerous television and radio appearances debating Middle East history and politics. He is also the author of Overthrowing Geography: Jaffa, Tel Aviv and the Struggle for Palestine 1880-1848 and co-editor of Twilight of Evil: Responses to Occupation.
Is the Muslim world really a seething mass of anti-Western hatred, or is the true situation more complicated than that? In this important and ambitious new work, Mark LeVine combines historical and economic analysis with a wealth of personal experience to create a vivid and compelling picture of the human face behind the veil of the ‘axis of evil’.
Going beyond the stereotypes and below the media radar, this book explains why, contrary to the popular perception, ‘they’ don’t hate ‘us’ - or at least, not yet.
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- PublisherOneworld Pubns Ltd
- Publication date2011
- ISBN 10 1851685030
- ISBN 13 9781851685035
- BindingPaperback
- Rating
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