Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam.(Book Review)

First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life, December, 2002

By JOHN L. ESPOSITO. Oxford University Press. 196pp. $25.

Esposito directs the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University and, like most Middle East scholars, has over the years presented a roseate picture of an Islam sorely misunderstood by the West. After September 11, some hurried academic damage control was required, and this is Esposito's modestly revisionist acknowledgment that there are some nasty dynamics at work within Islam but we should not be excessively distracted by the recent unpleasantness. One wishes it were more convincing.