The subtitle of this book by Robert R. Reilly is “How Intellectual Suicide Created the Modern Islamist Crisis,” and the author certainly documents the basis for that subtitle. I did not enjoy reading this book for several reasons. It provides the Islamic words to interpret various descriptions and meanings, and I found that quite distracting.(Page 43 has 14 examples, to include fard for duty and mubah for permitted.) I was also disappointed early when the author announced that he was going to focus strictly on Sunni beliefs and was not going to discuss the “Shi’ites…except tangentially…” I was disappointed there wouldn’t be any help for me understanding the differences between those two groups.

The best of book is Chapter 8, “The Sources of Islamism.” It answers many of my questions about the Muslim Brotherhood and its widespread influence. The origin of the Muslim Brotherhood is traced back to the shock among Islamists over the abolition of the caliphate by Kemal Ataturk in 1924. (I have done a commentary including discussion of that event that I intend to post with this review.) The Muslims decided this must have been caused by their lack of faith. The only solution was to restore “…Muslim faith to a pristine condition.” In late forties and early fifties Sayyid Qutb traveled from Egypt to college in Greely, Colorado. He was disgusted by what he saw as a materialist and degenerate culture. He traveled back to Egypt and became a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. He went to the gallows in 1966 smiling, and that image inspires his followers today. It is worth noting that there were periods in the development of the Muslim Brotherhood that they modeled themselves after the Nazi Brownshirts and later were part of the Communist party in Egypt.

The book provides insight into the thinking of Islamists. The foreword describes that reason is the enemy of Islam, “…which requires absolute and unquestioning submission to the will of Allah.” The author explains that the avoidance of reason “…is the key to unlocking such puzzles as why the Arab world stands near the bottom of every measure of human development; why scientific inquiry is nearly moribund in the Islamic world.”

Islam controlled most of the Middle East and that control had reached into parts of China, Spain, and Africa by 650 A.D. The success of its conquests served to reinforce its disdain and suspicions of other beliefs. “The Qur’an, it was thought, contained everything needed, and non–Qur’anic things were either against it or superfluous.” There were Muslim theologians in the eighth and ninth centuries who advocated reason and that man had power over his own actions. The side that believed God alone controlled the actions of all men resisted and decreed that disagreeing was a crime punishable by death. Studying science was considered blasphemy. One leader wrote, “We must refrain from studying these things (such as physics).”

The book gives several examples of how believing in only the Qur’an can shape the thinking of its followers:

• Leaders of successful invasions ordered destruction of captured books. The Taliban ordered the destruction of all books in Afghanistan except the Qur’an
• One Muslim leader was said to have never eaten watermelon because there was no known instance of Muhammad having done so
• Innovation is considered a high offense because innovation is considered a “hell fire misguidance”
• God destroys the world and recreates it each moment, which means the path of a fired arrow “…cannot be predicted because it is God alone who knows how the world is to be recreated”
• Physical cause and effect does not exist because “…it is divine intervention which moves matter”
• Allah does not forbid murder because it is bad; it is bad because he forbids it
• A woman who gets out of a bath naked in front of a dog has done nothing wrong if the dog is male.
• A prayer must be repeated if a donkey, black dog or woman go by because the “…donkey is an impure animal; the black dog could be Satan in disguise; women are impure regardless.”
• A “scorched earth policy” toward reason is intended to leave man no alternative other than the Islamic God
• The act of thinking makes one an infidel
• There is no foundation for equal rights because Islam “…divides men and women, believer and unbeliever, and freeman and slave.”
• It is “…not Islamic to say that combining hydrogen and oxygen makes water…” because water is created by the will of Allah in bringing hydrogen and oxygen together.
• Muslims consider that the oil wealth of Saudi Arabia is “…a reward to the Saudis for following the true path.”

I recommend reading this book to provide a better understanding of current events in the Middle East, I found it very difficult to read, but feel it gave me a much better understanding of what motivates Islamic terrorists.