Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #37193 in Books
• Published on: 2008-02-25
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 230 pages

From the Publisher
In the wake of the terrorist attacks on 9/11, U.S. public officials seemed to have no idea whether or not many Muslims supported the bombings. This troubled Gallup Chairman and CEO Jim Clifton, who felt that "no one in Washington had any idea what 1.3 billion Muslims were thinking, and yet we were working on intricate strategies that were going to change the world for all time." Clifton commissioned his company to undertake the enormous job.

The result is Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think, based on six years of research and more than 50,000 interviews representing 1.3 billion Muslims who reside in more than 35 nations that are predominantly Muslim or have sizable Muslim populations. Representing more than 90% of the world's Muslim community, it makes this poll the largest, most comprehensive study of its kind.

What the data reveal and the authors illuminate may surprise you:

* Muslims and Americans are equally likely to reject attacks on civilians as morally unjustifiable.
* Large majorities of Muslims would guarantee free speech if it were up to them to write a new constitution AND they say religious leaders should have no direct role in drafting that constitution.
* Muslims around the world say that what they LEAST admire about the West is its perceived moral decay and breakdown of traditional values -- the same answers that Americans themselves give when asked this question.
* When asked about their dreams for the future, Muslims say they want better jobs and security, not conflict and violence.
* Muslims say the most important thing Westerners can do to improve relations with their societies is to change their negative views toward Muslims and respect Islam.

The research suggests that conflict between Muslims and the West is NOT inevitable and, in fact, is more about policy than principles. "However," caution Esposito and Mogahed, "until and unless decision makers listen directly to the people and gain an accurate understanding of this conflict, extremists on all sides will continue to gain ground."

Who Speaks for Islam? is an important book that challenges conventional wisdom and sheds greater light on what motivates Muslims worldwide. It is a must-read for anyone committed to creating peace and security in our lifetime.

From the Back Cover
"In these fraught days of heightened tension and increasing hostility, few books could be more timely."
--Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nobel Peace Prize winner

"As our world spirals out of control with greater violence and misunderstanding between the West and the Muslim world, Who Speaks for Islam? cuts through the conflicting rhetoric of politicians and pundits and presents the often-silenced voice of Muslims everywhere. I cannot imagine a more important or more badly needed intervention."
--Deepak Chopra, author of Peace is the Way

"The data presented in this book are not only arresting, but indispensable. Who Speaks for Islam? should be required reading for policy makers, journalists, broadcasters, teachers, students, and scholars."
--Karen Armstrong, author of A History of God

"At once incisive and provocative, this book is brimming with valuable insights into what Muslims think about religion, democracy, women's rights, extremism, and Muslims' relations with the West. This is a must-read for pundits and policy makers, specialists and non-specialists, American or Muslim."
--Vali Nasr, author of The Shia Revival: How Conflicts Within Islam Will Shape the Future

"Who Speaks for Islam? teaches us about one of the most important issues of our time. The book contains many surprises about how Westerners and Muslims view one another."
--Jessica Stern, author of Terror in the Name of God and Academic Director of the Program on Terrorism and the Law at Harvard Law School

"This is an important book. Years after 9/11, politics and quick judgments continue to stand in the way of a clear-eyed view of the Muslim world. Not so for Esposito and Mogahed. They provide powerful evidence and compelling logic that shows Muslims around the world have many of the same hopes and dreams, and face many of the same issues and concerns, as other people do."
--Robert Pape, author of Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism and Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago

"Who Speaks for Islam? could not be more timely. It provides essential insights into the thinking and attitudes of a large part of the global Muslim population on critical issues such as democracy, theocracy, extremism, jihad, women's rights, and the prospects of cooperation or conflict between the West and the Muslim world."
--Ambassador Edward P. Djerejian, former assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs; founding director, James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University

About the Author
John L. Esposito, Ph.D., is a leading expert on the Muslim world. He is University Professor and a professor of religion and international affairs and of Islamic studies at Georgetown University and the founding director of Georgetown's Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding in the Walsh School of Foreign Service. He is also the past president of the Middle East Studies Association of North America and of the American Council for the Study of Islamic Societies and a consultant to governments and multinational corporations. Esposito is editor in chief of The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World and Oxford Islamic Studies Online. His more than 35 books include What Everyone Needs to Know About Islam and Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam. He currently resides in Washington, D.C., with his wife, Jeanette P. Esposito, Ph.D.

Dalia Mogahed is a senior analyst and executive director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies. She leads the analysis of Gallup's unprecedented study of more than 1 billion Muslims worldwide. Mogahed also directs the Muslim-West Facts Initiative, through which Gallup, in collaboration with The Coexist Foundation, is disseminating the findings of the Gallup World Poll to key opinion leaders in the Muslim World and the West. She travels the globe engaging audiences on what Muslims around the world really think. Her analysis has appeared in a number of leading publications, including The Economist, the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy magazine, Harvard International Review, Middle East Policy, and many other academic and popular journals. She lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband, Mohamed, and two sons, Tariq and Jibreel.

Customer Reviews

Insightful and easy
A good book, which is especially useful to people unfamiliar with the Muslim world. I would highly recommend it to non-Muslims and Muslims alike.

Its positives are that it is especially revealing about Muslims societies and people, capturing their perspectives on a wide range of issues including feminism, terrorism and development; and then secondly in contrasting these perspectives with those of Europeans and Americans. The results are really quite surprising. The third good thing about this text is that it is highly read-able. At only 170 small-ish reading pages of large-ish font size, it takes about a half day to go through.

Its negatives are few. The one that struck me was that the book is based on reems of Gallup data - none of which is presented, even in the appendices. The reader is presented with isolated snippets of data, and I would have liked to see a more comprehensive and robust presentation of data from which to draw my own interpretations. Somebody might also raise the point that this is not really an academic or 'intellectual' book - but in fairness, I don't think either author intended for it to be so.

High time for a reality check
Everybody may have a right to his or her own opinion, but this doesn't mean that all opinions are equally right. What separates mere opinion from reasoned judgment, at least when it comes to empirical claims, is a hard and judicious analysis of available data. The more heated the topic under discussion, the more important it is to have facts that back up positions. Otherwise, those who are most passionate, but not necessarily most informed, can carry the day.

Since at least 9/11, American pundits and people in the street (and a President) have made lots of claims about Islam. Everyone who reads the papers or watches television can recite them by heart: Muslims hate Americans because of our freedoms. Muslims despise democracy. Muslims are out to colonize Europe. The more devout a Muslim is, the more likely he or she is to become a terrorist. Muslims want theocratic governments. There's an inevitable and insoluble culture clash between the Muslim and non-Muslim worlds. And on and on it goes.

The extraordinary value of Who Speaks for Islam? is that the authors, John Esposito and Dalia Mogahed appeal to hard data from the Gallup World Poll (GWP) to examine these and other common U.S. opinions about Muslims. For six years, GWP interviewed tens of thousands of Muslims in over 35 nations, collecting a sample that represented 90% of the world's Muslim population (1.3 billion). The results--the hard data--are not just surprising. They're shocking. They suggest that almost every single thing that Americans think we know about Islam and Muslims are distortions. As such, Who Speaks for Islam? is a bracing reality check that, if read by enough of us, can change minds and policies.

Let me just mention two sets of data that go counter to two popular opinions about Islam. One has to do with sharia and the other with freedom of speech (and civil liberties in general).

The U.S. perception is that Muslims want to establish legal systems based exclusively on harsh sharia, or religious laws. But in fact, polled Muslims indicate something different. In most countries, only a minority of respondants want Sharia as the only source of law. In only 5 countries--Jordan, Egypt, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh--do respondants want Sharia as the only source of law. Most respondants think that an ideal legal system is based in part but not exclusively on Sharia. Ironically, a 2006 survey revealed that a full 46% of Americans think the Bible should a "a source," and 9% think it should be the "only" source, of legislation. 42% of Americans think religious leaders should be directly involved in writing laws, and 55% think the idea is awful--almost exactly the same figures about Muslim religious leaders and the law that come out of Iran (pp. 48-49).

Another common assumption is that Muslims dislike free speech, and the worldwide protests against the now infamous Danish cartoons of Mohammed are frequently cited as evidence. But vast numbers of polled Muslims insist that they admire many Western civil liberties. Their resentment against the U.S. isn't its freedoms so much as what they perceive as "the West's hatred and denigration of Islam; the Western belief that Arabs and Muslims are inferior; and their fear of Western intervention, domination, or occupation" (p. 141). So what drove the protests against the Danish cartoons for most Muslims wasn't a hatred of freedom of speech, but shock at what was perceived as disrespect of a religious figure venerated by Muslims. Interestingly, many non-Muslims agree that freedom of speech should be limited when it comes to ridiculing religious figures or using racist slurs. 57% of (non-Muslim) British and 45% of (non-Muslim) French thought the Danish cartoons shouldn't be protected by freedom of speech. Similarly, more than 75% of both populations would forbid cartoons making light of the Holocaust, and 86% of both would disallow racist cartoons (pp. 142-145). Once again, things just aren't as simple as the one-liner "Muslims are against freedom of speech" makes them out to be.

Are there genuine differences between Muslims and non-Muslims? Of course there are. But understanding wherein real differences as opposed to imaginary ones lie is the first step toward genuine dialogue. Who Speaks for Islam? paves the way for that initial step. Highly, urgently, recommended.

A balanced view on Islam
In a time of growing animosity between the West(Christianity) and Muslims world wide(Islam),this book provide us with a balanced approach to understand 'what a billion Muslims Really Think'. Most people belonging to the Christian way of life either have no interest in the Muslim way of life or have an extremely biased view of their perspectives. Ignorance and propaganda feed indignation, and indignant people will become more lenient towards subversive forces.This book should form part of prescribed literature in schools and colleges if we are serious to prevent extremism, creating a fair society and honest communication bridging the void.