Islamism, Secularism, and Human Rights in the Middle East.(Review)

Mahmood Monshipouri: (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1998. Pp. xi, 258. $53.00.)

This volume cites the "enormous momentum" achieved in the twentieth century toward the goals of democratic development and human rights, and seeks to understand how the region known as the Middle East can be judged a part of this experience. More fundamentally, the author seeks to describe the continuing debate between what he identifies as the secular rationalists on the one side, and the Islamists on the other. Monshipouri accepts as given the traditional character of the Muslim world and focuses attention on the long struggle between those within it who believe the goals of democratic development can be gained without tampering with the Islamic tradition, and those who argue the need to modify Islamic practices in order to reconcile religious experience with the eclecticism found in the global environment. Noting the tendency to equate democratic development and human rights with forms of westernization, the author seeks to convince the reader that Islam is neither antithetical nor opposed to expanding democratic rights, but that Muslims cannot separate themselves from their essential genius without doing mortal harm to a peculiar way of life. In effect, the burden of this volume is a purported analysis of …