Unmodern Men in the Modern World: Radical Islam, Terrorism, and the War on Modernity
Cambridge University Press, 11/15/2007
EAN 9780521712910, ISBN10: 0521712912
Paperback, 306 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 2 cm
Language: English
A sense of malaise and uncertainty surrounds the so-called war on terror. This volume offers a bold rethinking of the central challenge in that conflict: the rise of radical Islamism. Mazarr argues that this movement represents the latest in a series of anti-modern political and philosophical rebellions: in its causes, the shape of its ideology, and its social consequences, the movement shares much in common with German fascism, Russian revolutionary doctrines, and Japanese imperialist nationalism. The book builds a model of how anti-modern movements arise and suggests broader truths about the changing character of world politics and the psychological basis of national security in a globalized world. It concludes with a critique of the war on terror as currently pursued and a wide-ranging proposal for a strikingly different approach to the challenge of this latest challenge to modernity.
1. The argument
2. Modernization's price
3. The existentialist diagnosis
4. Stages in the trajectory of anti-modernism
5. The anti-modern ideology
6. The leaders and the recruits
7. What to do.