I’m back in Egypt after a summer break in cool Sweden. More about all that later. Meanwhile, check out this little screen capture from Facebook. It’s the “top books” discussed by members of the Egypt group on Facebook:
Granted, it’s a bit of a self-selecting, early-adopter crowd over on Facebook, but still: Alarmists who see a resurgent Islam beating back western influences need to explain the many cases where the influence is clearly flowing the other way.
I am still convinced that the resurgence of Islamism in many parts of the Muslim world is not just due to a perceived sense of rising western influence, but an actual rise in western influence. It’s partly a defensive reaction, rather than the preëmptive action many in the west make it out to be.
S
Are you taling about the rise in Egypt or other countries? Is it an actual rise or a perceived one?
That’d be my guess too. That likely radical islamism is a reaction
to the western world or rather the effect of the western world on muslims.
I’m not sure that necessarily makes it’s a weak movement though.
I’m also not sure about your example of book rankings as evidence for this.
Couldn’t that ordering also mean that the muslim middle east simply isn’t
a very book oriented place?
If few muslims are writing books; if few muslims are reading books; and if
the most bought muslim book is the Quran (which possibly itself is evidence
of these first two propositions), then maybe it’s inevitable that for
those few people who are reading, that what they are reading is going
to be from somewhere else.