Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | M | Middle East Policy

A Necessary Engagement: Reinventing America's Relations with the Muslim World.

Article Excerpt
A Necessary Engagement: Reinventing America's Relations with the Muslim World, by Emile Nakhleh. Princeton University Press, 2009. 146 pages. $26.95, hardcover.

Professor Emile Nakhleh's book takes on several related tasks: understanding Muslim views and differences among Muslim groups; analyzing which Muslim groups are reachable through public diplomacy and how to reach them; and explaining how the intelligence community and policy makers in the Bush administration regarded these issues. The author accomplishes all these tasks very well indeed.

After reminding the reader that there is a great deal of variety among the world's 1.2 billion Muslims, he describes and analyzes the various views, perceptions and attitudes that they hold. He presents a systematic analysis, focusing on issues of importance to the United States and the West, including attitudes toward democracy and participation in the political process, violence and terrorism, and American foreign policy. He explains that the vast majority of Muslims around the world oppose the goals and methods of al-Qaeda, estimating that only 2 percent of Islamic activists preach violence and terrorism, while 98 percent favor gradual change through participation in the democratic process and support engagement with the West. Nakhleh's analysis validates other recent studies of Muslim attitudes, such as the Gallup poll data presented by John Esposito and Dalia Mogahed in Who Speaks for Islam: What a Billion Muslims Really Think (Gallup Press, 2008), but he provides a great deal of nuance and analysis that goes well beyond theirs.

Nakhleh adds texture and detail to these other studies by explaining with specific examples how Islamic parties have participated...

View this article FREE - Now for a Limited Time, try Goliath Business News
Free for 3 Days!