he Muslim World Brings Forth a Counter-Jihad

Posted on Sep 15, 2011

By Lee Smith

“Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion Across the Islamic World”
A book by Robin Wright

With the Arab Spring still unfolding, former Washington Post reporter Robin Wright’s latest book puts the popular uprisings that have swept the Arabic-speaking Middle East from North Africa and the Levant to the Persian Gulf littoral in the context of a larger movement: counter-jihad. Muslims around the world, she writes, are “increasingly rejecting extremism. The many forms of militancy—from the venomous Sunni creed of al-Qaida to the punitive Shiite theocracy in Iran—have proven costly, unproductive and ultimately unappealing.”


Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion Across the Islamic World
By Robin Wright
Simon & Schuster, 320 pages

"In other words, Osama bin Laden’s efforts produced a result contrary to his intentions. After 9/11 dragged the United States into the Middle East in force, Muslims turned not toward extremism but moderation. According to Wright’s survey of the Muslim world, bin Laden’s message was dead long before the Navy SEALs brought him down in May. “Rock the Casbah,” then, is an introduction to the Muslim world 10 years after 9/11, and the author’s purpose is partly to illuminate and partly to instruct.

From Wright’s perspective,Americans’ view of Muslims and Islam hasn’t caught up to the reality. In spite of developments in the Middle East and elsewhere in the Muslim world, she argues, the past decade here in the United States was “shaped largely by fear of everything from a global clash of civilizations to a new neighborhood mosque.” more at link... above.