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Essentialist paradigms just seem to come naturally to Western thinking on Islam and the Middle East. Public discourse on the Muslim world is heavily accented by Samuel Huntington's "clash of civilizations" and Bernard Lewis's account of "what went wrong" in Muslim history. The governing assumptions in Richard Bulliet's essays are that such paradigms exacerbate tensions between the United States and the Muslim world and that they threaten Muslim minorities in Western societies. Therefore, he considers it urgent that we re-envision the historical relationship between Islam and the West to avoid turning the clash of civilizations thesis into self-fulfilling prophecy. The essays at hand pose four large, loosely related questions. Does it make sense to view Middle Eastern Islam and Latin Christendom as components of a common Islamo-Christian civilization rather than as rival civilizations? Why does religion play a significant role in modern Muslim politics? Why did American Middle East specialists fail to predict the Islamic revival? What might the future hold for the Muslim world?
Bulliet argues there can be no clash of civilizations because Latin Christendom and Middle Eastern Islam form a single civilization. His case rests on identifying comparable dynamics of converting populations to monotheistic religions, the emergence of religious specialists (ulema and monks) with institutions of learning (madrasas and monasteries), and the evolution of similar religious forms (Sufi orders and popular...