Extreme Islam: Anti-American Propaganda of Muslim Fudamentalism Adam Parfrey, Editor Feral House, 2002 US$16.00 328 pp. Available at Amazon.

The purpose of this book is to demonstrate what is inherent in Islamic societies, and perhaps in the religion's founding documents themselves, that foments extremism and violence. This is a delicate proposition to try to prove, especially as many Islamic scholars (as well as everyday Muslims) have pointed out that their Islam has nothing to do with bombs and bloodshed. Therefore, one should clearly hold the creator of such a book to the skeptic's principal: "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." If Mr. Parfrey expects us to believe that there is something inherent in Islam that makes it a more violent religion than Christianity or Judaism, the burden of proof is on him and on the documents he has been able to assemble.

As noted above, this book is a collection of the writings of others. For the most part, the selections nearer the beginning are vastly more interesting, cogent and useful than those near the end. The organization, such as it is, seems designed to facilitate an understanding of the historical origins of modern extremist Islamic thought, the political and religious soil from which modern Islamic movements grew, and finally a cross-section of the most extreme views of modern Islamic leaders. Let us, then, examine these vague sections, and see how effectively the book does its job.

The first third actually does its job admirably; after a rather melodramatically-placed reprint of Yates' "The Second Coming" ("What rough beast, its hour come round at last / Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?") the first entry consists of the interpretations of Islamic law as promulgated by an Iraqi jurist. Obviously, these are meant to seem ridiculous to a secular audience (among the injunctions is one forbidding the disposal of newspapers which contain quotations from the Koran; apparently, a believer must remove these quotes from the accompanying text and "purify" them somehow). There are also documents describing the role of "martyrs", a copy of a basic Islamic will, and a description of the afterlife of a suicide bomber. Then again, there are nonsensical, inoffensive, and/or wildly prejudicial documents included here as well. For instance, there is a point by point description of the prayers a Muslim should conduct five times per day. This is interesting, in a purely curious sort of way, but does nothing to advance the thesis that this is an extreme religion. If anything, the ritual seems admirable, and its inclusion here is distracting. Immediately following this is a discussion of a conversation between Hitler and the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. Granted, this gives some historical background, but tarring a whole religion with a Hitler brush is not merely unfair, but almost ludicrous.

The second third of the book focuses on the intellectual underpinnings of the rise of jihad in a modern context, and is easily Extreme Islam's best-organized and most informative section. An excerpt from the memoir of Hassan al-Banna Shaheed, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, gives an excellent encapsulation of the line of thinking that turned pan-Arab nationalism into pan-Arab Islamism. It is followed by an article by Sadat, who was, of course, killed by the Muslim Brotherhood; this article is followed immediately by an excerpt from Muhammad Abd al-Salam Faraj's book Neglected Duty, which helped foment the fervor that led to Sadat's assassination. If Parfrey had taken this kind of editorial care with the rest of his book, its point might have been much more clearly made. Directly following these is a discussion of Palestine, the origins of the conflict, and its development into an ongoing international crisis. There is a particularly interesting digression on the Temple Mount, locus of lunacy for three major monotheistic religions. Documents here include the thoughts of the most extreme views of millenarian Christians and Jews (who would like to blow up the Dome of the Rock), which do a nice job of placing radical Islam in a context of general anti-modern, anti-rational thought. The problem is, this tends to defuse the thesis of the book, which concerns the uniquely violent nature of Islam. In other words, Parfrey's best work tends to shoot his own concept in the foot.

The last third is a bit of a hodge-podge, and includes material from wildly disparate sources. For instance, there is a letter from Saddam Hussein to an American, in which he makes an incoherent and self-serving plea against sanctions while donning a cloak of piety. Even the most ardent supporters of the Iraqi people don't claim that Saddam represents Islam in any way; most view him as an apostate, and are angry with the United States for its treatment of everyday Iraqis, not Saddam's government. The inclusion of his thoughts in this book is bizarre. Even stranger is a rant by Louis Farrakhan about being taken in a UFO to see Elijah Muhammad. These are placed under the heading of "The Radical Outsiders", but it is truly unclear what the thoughts of one-man Islamic organizations (Khilafah, for instance), or Freemason/Secret Global Conspiracy theorists have to say about the implications of Islam and the modern world. These views would seem as marginal to Islam as LaRouche Democrats are to the US political process.

The introduction notes that "the purpose of Extreme Islam is not to harm, but to understand...If (fundamentalist Islam) has believers guiding jets into skyscrapers...then perhaps we should ask ourselves whether or not The Holy Qur'an is itself the voice of moderation, or an extremist document." The problem with his premise is that it presumes that such a question is answerable, even to a small extent. If there's one useful thing that post-modernism has taught us, it's that even the simplest text is infinitely reinterpretable. The New Testament of the gentle Christian soul ministering to the least of His people is reading the same book that the One World Government prophecy loon is ranting about. The idea that there is something inherently violent about the Koran strikes me as a not particularly useful concept; there's something inherently violent about almost all of the founding documents of every civilization in history. While this book functions as a poorly edited collection containing several eye-openingly interesting documents, as a tool for argument it must be considered a failure.

-- Brett McCallon