Engaging the Muslim world / Juan Cole

Includes bibliographical references (p. [253]-273) and index.

The struggle for Islamic oil -- Muslim activism, Muslim radicalism: telling the two apart -- The Wahhabi myth -- Iraq and Islamophobia: how fearmongering got up a war and kept it going -- Pakistan and Afghanistan beyond the Taliban -- Ayatollahs and caviar: the Iranian challenge.

With clarity and concision, the author disentangles the key foreign policy issues that America is grappling with today, from our dependence on Middle East petroleum to the promotion of Islamophobia by the American right, and delivers his informed advice on the best way forward. His unique ability to take the true Muslim perspective into account when looking at East-West relations make his insights well-rounded and prescient as he suggests a course of action on fundamental issues like religion, oil, war, and peace. With substantive recommendations for the administration on how to move forward in key countries such as Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran, this book reveals how we can repair the damage of the disastrous foreign policy of the last eight years and forge ahead on a path of peace and prosperity. He argues that Al-Qaeda is not a mass movement like fascism or communism but rather a small political cult like the American far right circles that produced Timothy McVeigh, and that the Muslim world is not a new Soviet Bloc but rather is full of close allies or potential allies. He also maintains that there can be no such thing as American energy independence; we will need Islamic oil to survive as a superpower into the next century. He also states that Iran is not an implacable enemy of the U.S., it can and should be fruitfully engaged, which is a necessary step for American energy security, since Tehran has the ability to play the spoiler in the strategic Persian Gulf. He also advises that America's best hope in Iraq is careful, deliberate military disengagement, rather than either through immediate withdrawal or a century-long military presence.