online archive
4:00PM
DEC 10 2007
Losing the war of ideas
Andrew F. March (Yale): Reading Tariq Ramadan: Political Liberalism, Islam, and "Overlapping Consensus". Asef Bayat, author of Making Islam Democratic: Social Movements and the Post-Islamist Turn, on democracy and the Muslim citizenry. Our priorities in the West are wrong: Secularism is what we should be spreading across the globe. Edward Skidelsky reviews A Secular Age by Charles Taylor and Secularism confronts Islam by Olivier Roy (and more). Losing the war of ideas: We can win if we restore the sense of purpose that makes freedom a moral imperative—not a problem. From Frontline, a review of books on diplomacy. From History Today (reg. req.), cloaks, daggers and dynamite: A century ago international anarchists were causing public outrage and panic with their terror tactics, paralleling al-Qaeda today. A review of Buda’s Wagon: A Brief History of the Car Bomb by Mike Davis. A review of Blood and Belief: The PKK and the Kurdish Fight for Independence by Aliza Marcus. From Details, going AWOL: Thousands of soldiers have deserted the Army since the beginning of the Iraq war — so why is an overstretched military doing the bare minimum to bring them back? Trapped in the Green Zone: Hundreds of Iraqi families have sought refuge in Baghdad's Green Zone in recent years. Now the authorities want them out — but beyond the barricades, death awaits. A review of Reporting Iraq: An Oral History of the War by the Journalists Who Covered It.
