A world Without Islam pdfdrive com

Acknowledgments
This book reflects ideas and insights I have gained over long years, from many
hundreds of people, Westerners and Muslims. I can’t begin to sort out who has
helped influence me on these themes over the years.
I would like to acknowledge here, however, the very direct help and
comments on this manuscript from a number of people, in particular Daniel
Bogert-O’Brien, Russell Brant, George Fowler, Andre Gierolymatos, Dimitrios
Krallis, and Glenn Perry. I fear I have neglected to mention many others who
have passed along thoughts to me here and there or who have provided useful
debate on some of the ideas in the book. Any errors are, of course, my own.
I wish to thank my thoughtful and supportive editor at Little, Brown, Junie
Dahn—always a pleasure to deal with—and editor in chief, Geoff Shandler, for
having originally encouraged me to write a book on this topic.

---

Notes
This is a book about ideas and alternative ways of thinking about them; I have
not attempted to “prove” or to document an alternative history, but rather to look
at familiar events and to explore their motivating factors quite apart from
religion.
The arguments in this book are based on my own thinking about the history
of the Middle East and Islamic Asia over a very long period of time. I have been
a student of the Middle East ever since early youth, when my imagination was
captured by pictures, books, music, and films of the region. I have read
innumerable books on the region, and I have lived, worked, and studied in many
different Middle Eastern countries for over a decade and a half.
I have turned to mainstream reference sources primarily for dates, for
refining my memory, and for additional details pertinent to this alternative
reading of East-West conflict, which diminishes the centrality of religion per se
—as opposed to so many other formative factors in history. In this case, the
Encyclopædia Britannica, the Encyclopedia of Islam, and the ever-sharpening
online resource Wikipedia have been helpful in establishing some general details
of events.

---