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Customer Reviews of Faith and power: The politics of Islam

Edward Mortimer, a journalist and most recently a special adviser at the United Nations,

I first read this book for a Middle East studies class in the mid-1980s, and a few details are now out of date, such as names of various rulers who are no longer in office (or in some cases, alive). But overall, the book holds up quite well because it takes a look at the historical issues feeding Islamic matters today.

Given Pakistan's importance to U.S. anti-terrorism efforts, I found the chapter on that country especially worth re-reading.

Here are a couple of things Mortimer says: "Pakistan was an attempt to re-create an Islamic order after a long period of colonial rule...Pakistan was therefore an experiment of great significance for Muslims wherever the incursion of the West had broken the continuity of their political tradition."

Mortimer goes on to raise questions about the viability and even logic of the existence of Pakistan, given its lack of ethnic and religious identification that would distinguish it from other states in the area or around the Muslim world.

Pakistan forms just one chapter of Mortimer's excellent book, which starts with the beginnings of the Muslim faith and goes through the historical divisions within Islam, Western impact on the Arab and Muslim world, Arab nationalism, the rise of the Shiite clerics to power in Iran and the Soviet disaster in Afghanistan.

This is a book requiring serious attention because what Mortimer has to say applies to current events regardless of when it was published.