The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization by Richard W. BullietReview by: L. Carl BrownForeign Affairs, Vol. 84, No. 2 (Mar. - Apr., 2005), p. 167Published by: Council on Foreign RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20034325 .

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Recent Books

Al-Jazeera: The Inside Story oftheArab News Channel That Is Challenging the West. BY HUGH MILES. Grove, 2005,

448 pp. $24.00.

Although independent, Al-Jazeera was started in November 1996 with a hand some grant from the emir of Qatar,

who still covers its annual deficits. Since then, it has become the most widely

watched television network in the Arab world and has revolutionized Arab news coverage, with in-depth reporting (gain ing access to the Osama bin Laden tapes and "embedding" among the Afghan and Iraqi people instead of only with

U.S. forces), talk shows that offer real debate, and more. It has also been de nounced or had its reporters banned by the Saudis (whose pressures on potential advertisers have reportedly prevented the network from achieving profitability), the Palestinian Authority, various other

Arab governments, and the United States. Miles, who has interviewed

most of Al-Jazeera's staff and moni tored their news and talk programs over the last two years, offers a positive appraisal of the organization's journalistic competence while introducing as a counterpoint what he describes, con vincingly, as the inefficacy of official U.S. public relations. Because of Al Jazeera, he concludes, the Arab media will never be the same: official Arab channels must go beyond "the president

met today with .. ." programs or lose their audience to Al-Jazeera or its emerging rivals, such as Al-Arabiya. But before reading too much into this media revolution, look at Miles' penulti mate chapter, "Free Speech and the Domino Effect."

The Caseforlslamo-Christian Civilization. BY RICHARD W. BULLIET. Columbia

University Press, 2004, 192 pp. $24.50. What if, instead of viewing the Muslim world as a fundamentally different "other," we saw it as sharing a common cultural tradition? What if, instead of asking what

went wrong in the Muslim world, we sought to find out what went on? Pre senting comparatively major themes of historical development in the Middle East and the West, Bulliet argues that the two are best understood not in terms of a clash of civilizations but in terms of a "twinned relationship ... over some fourteen centuries." He cannot quite break out of the us-and-them dichotomy. In criticizing the "what went wrong" ap proach, he notes that it depends on one's criteria of success. Islam has, for example,

won many more converts than Christianity has in the last 500 years. Furthermore, he argues, those in the West (and especially

Americans) have failed to understand the deep-rooted Islamic norms governing the relationship between state and society.

This little book offers a rich lode of penetrating insights encased in two quite different arguments, seemingly contra dictory but better seen as complementary: Islam and the West have much in com

mon, and each must be appreciated on its own terms.

The Muslim WorldAfter 9/ll. BY ANGEL M. RABASA ET AL. Rand, 2004, 564 pp.

$X5.oo (paper, $40.00). In another big book from the Rand Cor poration, eight authors provide separate chapters on Muslims and politics in the

Middle East, the Maghreb, Southeast Asia, western Africa, and Muslim dias poras in Europe and America, as well as on

F O R E I G N A F FA I R S March/April2005 [167]

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