A World Without Islam

Booklist

Fuller dares to suggest that overcoming the twenty-first-century anti-Western animosities of Middle Eastern Muslims requires an honest and historically informed assessment of economic and political inequities that moves us beyond a fixation on religious issues. This exceptional inquiry finally sustains a quite specific-and controversial-set of recommendations for reframing American foreign policy.

Ishaan Tharoor

Well-reasoned...Fuller's book is indeed a useful corrective.
— Time

Reza Aslan

Another must-read by one of the most thought-provoking writers on Islam and the Middle East.
— author of No god but God and Beyond Fundamentalism

Publishers Weekly

In this wide-ranging historical text, Fuller, former vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council at the CIA, suggests that many of the current tensions that exist between the East and the West have geopolitical rather than religious origins and that these tensions would have arisen in a "world without Islam." The author opens the book with a theological analysis that emphasizes the continuities among the three Abrahamic faiths. He then pivots to an extended history of the Christian world that focuses on the conflict between Latin and Byzantine Europe, pointing out that the schism between them largely motivated the Crusades. The book then covers the relationship of Islam to Russia, India, and China before turning to the Muslim world specifically, surveying its centuries-long decline from a position of cultural, political, and economic dominance. Fuller covers an extraordinary number of subjects lucidly, and whether readers are persuaded by his valorization of geopolitics above religion, he cogently lays out the complex causes of contemporary conflicts and makes bold policy recommendations that move conversations about East-West relations beyond religious and ideological divides. (Aug.)

John L. Esposito

A tour de force by one of the foremost authorities on global Muslim politics.
— author of The Future of Islam

Zachary Karabell

Fuller has been a voice of reason and calm in an otherwise hysterical debate about the root causes of the contemporary logjam....[A World Without Islam] is a needed corrective, a sober call not to settle for historical pabulum and instead recall a past and recognize a present that is far more complicated and layered than any polemic would have us believe.
— Los Angeles Times

Library Journal

Fuller (former vice chair, National Intelligence Council, CIA; The Future of Political Islam) refutes the opinion that Islam is intrinsically prone to conflict and bears significant responsibility for violent relations with Western states. The author convincingly argues that non-Islamic sources of conflict alone would generate violence in a "world without Islam." Fuller's strength here is his willingness to examine several cases: those where conflict would probably be intense had Islam never existed, such as that between the Latin West and Byzantium; conflicts in which Islam reinforces fundamental geopolitical problems, such as Palestine and Kashmir; and conflicts that are basically ethnic rather than religious, such as between the Chinese government and Turkic Uighurs. Comparison between the latter conflict and the Chinese government's peaceful relations with ethnic Chinese Muslims, the Hui, supports the argument. Fuller's conclusion suggests that U.S. Middle East policy should react as though "Islam did not exist" and, instead, focus on other basic sources of conflict.Verdict Some readers may feel that Fuller's premise amounts to refuting a "straw-man," yet the impact of Samuel Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order and the notion of "Islam's bloody borders" ensure the relevance of this closely argued, complex, and thoughtful book. It should become a part of further discussion about the nature of contemporary international relations. Highly recommended.—Zachary T. Irwin, Penn State-Erie