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| The West, Islam and Islamism: Is Ideological Islam Compatible with Liberal Democracy? (Civil Society) | 
 enlarge | Authors: Caroline Cox, John Marks
Publisher: Civitas:Institute for the Study of Civil Society
Category: Book
List Price: £9.50
Buy New: £8.00
You Save: £1.50 (16%)
New (6) Used (4) from £8.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 230350
Media: Paperback
Edition: 2nd Revised edition
Pages: 253
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.5 x 5.2 x 0.7
ISBN: 1903386543
Dewey Decimal Number: 320
EAN: 9781903386545
ASIN: 1903386543
Publication Date: October 16, 2006
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: this is a brand new copy, but may be slightly imperfect through clumsy storage/transportation/packing
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| Customer Reviews:
 Interesting but uselessly inconclusive; disappointingly politically correct, September 15, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Ten years ago, I'd have laughed off Islam as a quaint absurdity. In fact it's a model of what a rigid belief system can do. So it should be understood. There are 1.6 billion reasons why. This book is at first sight OK BUT:--
[1] This book draws no conclusion; in a sense it's useless.
In Britain these people get more rights than the 'natives' and deliberately outbreed them. Women have few rights (the police and the system collude in not helping them; Muslim police are known to be relatively corrupt). The women have arranged 'marriages', polygamy, are often uneducated and in fear, and have little choice but breed.
So what should be done? There are roughly four possible approaches: [1] do nothing with the virtual certainty there'll be an ineducable underclass - or overclass; what might happen - probably a sub-scientific society - is not discussed in the book; [2] hope they can be reformed, and encourage reform; [3] withdraw their benefits etc; [4] explicitly do everything to remove them, by, for example, enforcing laws against ritual slaughter and mosques, preventing separatist education, and prosecuting all apostles of violence.
This book is dishonest in not clearly facing the options.
[2] Sceptics will be irritated by the book's assumptions about 'liberal democracies' compared with Islamic societies and Marxist societies. A table: 'Western societies.. pluralism is encouraged and realised. .. there are commitments to equality..' I'd rather live here than there, but the blithe assumptions are of course nonsense, as wars in Vietnam, Iraq and so on, and attacks on democracy in for example the EU, and censorship, prove.
[3] One clue to this book is that it understates completely the role of Jews in the west. In many ways Judaism is similar to Islam:
*ritual slaughter and food taboos
*circumcision and (arguably) distinctive odd clothing
*very pronounced racist (Judaism) and tribalist (Islam) feeling
*deliberate dishonesty (Kol Nidre in Judaism, Taqqiya in Islam) similar to 'Jesuitry'
*Legal system of a sort
*Sacred texts
Much of the material comes from American Jews e.g. Daniel Pipes. Naturally such people don't draw attention to these similarities. BUT Jews in the 'west' OUGHT to be studied as an analogous case, to predict what might happen.
[4] The differences between these religions are crucial:
*Sheer population numbers - Islam is not particularist, unlike Judaism, and can spread anywhere
*Slavery - very much emphasised in the Quran. Caroline Cox has appendices about the Sudan showing Islamically-encouraged slaughters and abductions. These of course are horrible and savage; but what about the 'west' and its actions? What about Catholics in South East Asia?
*Jihad - struggle. It sounds very like 'Mein Kampf'. In fact parts of this book - for example 'The Project' - resemble the 'protocols' and may even have been written to suggest such a parallel.
[5] The book assumes 9/11 was Islamic - sceptical readers will know of course this is nonsense. Both authors assume the 'Holocaust' was a fact, and generally regard Hitler as irrational etc, which doesn't improve the book. They also think al Queda exists in a way it is known not to. These mistakes ruin any chance that this book can reach useful conclusions.
[6] There is some solid information here, for example, 7 prominent individuals in 20th C Islam, and 12 prominent organisations. Whether these are accurate, one has to doubt. But the drawbacks of this book are so serious, as is its failure to take the subject seriously, I can give only one star.
 More than five stars if possible November 4, 2007
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
The aim of this book is to help peace-loving Muslims stand shoulder to shoulder with the citizens of liberal democracies to oppose extremism and defend the equitable rule of law for all. It is by far the best, most eirenic book I have read on the subject. This is a great up to date reference source to see the origins of Islamism and how it has spread and who are its promoters, especially in the U.K.. The authors compare Western and Islamic world views and their concepts of knowledge and truth. Academic and Ideological modes of understanding are contrasted. I do though wonder if post-modernism fits the paradigm of the academic mode. Political and social structures are described. The history of relations between the West and Islam puts the modern predicament in context. Both the West and Islam are challenged as to what changes are necessaryfor peace. The authors are righly critical of the attitudes of the British establisment toward Islam and the challenges it poses. The history of slavery presented is an eye opener as to the extent that Islam has used it . There is an excellent appendix on what is a moderate Muslim. I have read it and now to own it as a reference source .
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