Featuring Pervez Hoodbhoy, Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad and Author, Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality (Zed Books, 1991); with comments by Peter Bergen, Author, Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama Bin Laden (Free Press, 2001).
On September 11, 2001, radical Islamists — the type who take Islamic theology literally — demonstrated their unequivocal opposition to all that America stands for. Convinced that a war between civilizations has already begun, hostile to the notion of individual rights and pluralism, and supportive of belief over reason, Islamists are now making a revolutionary bid for the allegiance of a deeply divided and frustrated Islamic world. But does radical Islam’s fearsome anger originate from its anti-modernist and anti-democratic agenda or from the U.S. cynical manipulation of Islamic fundamentalist forces over the last three decades? What ultimately pushed those forces from collaboration to unremitting opposition, and why are moderate Muslims seemingly helpless?