Abrahamson does not concern himself with the many factors that lead to the rise and fall of civilizations, and he conveniently ignores the historical and contemporary role that foreign powers have played in delaying or circumventing a modern Islamic renaissance. In his rather “interesting” narrative, the Islamic world is not in conflict with a rogue superpower wishing to impose its will on the entire region, but on the contrary, the conflict is within the Islamic world.

The debilitating role that centuries of colonial rule played in preventing the rise of a modern Muslim power; the carving of the Middle East into spheres of influence among competing imperialist forces; the role that Israel played and continues to play as a spearhead of the West’s imperial project; the imposition of sanctions on Muslim countries (and the particularly brutal decade of economic genocide in which up to one million Iraqis perished); the West’s self-serving support of dictatorships; and the contemptible historical record of Western intervention in the Muslim world have all been conveniently forgotten. Instead, he suggests that the Islamic civilization was “built in part on an avoidance of shame”—as if the quest for honor and the preservation of dignity is not a universal demand, but rather an exclusive attribute of an Islamic civilization that is obsessed with the “honor-shame complex” (another “essentialist” Orientalist proposition).

Sadly, Abrahamson follows through by making the most absurd of all propositions when he suggests that while the Islamists have a grandiose project that seeks the establishment of a theocratic Islamic empire, the “other contender in the struggle … has no such grandiose aims” and simply seeks to “end tyranny, oppression, ignorance, and appalling poverty.”

Abrahamson’s writing reminds one of Edward Said’s lucid observation that “every empire … tells itself and the world that it is unlike all other empires, that its mission is not to plunder and control, but to educate and liberate.” The imperial drive of the Bush administration and the neo-conservative cabal, which the author refuses to acknowledge, are eloquently captured by Manuel Valenzuela in his article “The War of Error,” published in the Axis of Logic Web site, when he explains that Bush’s imperial policies are intended “to quench the thirst of the military-industrial complex and the energy industry and to put in place a new era of market colonialism with the Middle East subservient to America and deferential to Israel … allowing one more time the infiltration into their lands [Arab lands] a Western Judeo-Christian ideology and armies intent of pilfering all the black gold the Arab lands possess.” It is well known that America’s strategic doctrine is built upon unilateral pre-emption, forceful regime change, the restructuring of regional maps, and the creation of conditions that foster perpetual conflict. If that does not constitute a “grandiose project,” then what does?

Abrahamson also contends that “Islam’s response to Western progress” came in the form of a “string of shabby tyrannies.” Let me remind Abrahamson that in America’s quest for the security of Israel, its relentless pursuit of oil, and its desire to fight ideologies that threatened its global hegemony, America wholeheartedly supported those tyrannies as long as they served its strategic goals and worked against its enemies. Even the Taliban, which Abrahamson claims is the role-model for Islamists, was looked favorably upon by US decision-makers between 1994 and 1998 since their advent on the Afghan political scene promised to contain Russian and Iranian influence, and increased the prospects of establishing trans-Afghanistan US-controlled oil and gas pipelines. Only when the Taliban proved impervious to foreign manipulation was it deemed a threat to the United States and a policy change was in order.

When Abrahamson discusses the democratic rumblings in the Middle East, he insists on attributing them to the US war on Iraq. On the contrary, the US presence in Iraq has only led to chaos, fueled the cause of Islamists, “routinized” militarism and murder, heightened sectarian tensions, and utterly failed to create a functional government, let alone a convincing model of a working democracy. In fact, one can safely argue that the rumblings of Arab/Muslim civil society is neither a new phenomenon that the United States should take credit for nor one that is the result of an example being set by the United States in Iraq. On the contrary, it is rather a cumulative, homegrown phenomenon that is based upon the particularities of each society and the domestic conditions that give rise to popular protest and civil activity.

Finally, one has to ask: If America’s policies in the Middle East are indeed inspirational for the people of the region, as Abrahamson suggests, then why would a congressionally-mandated panel conclude that “America’s reputation and image abroad could hardly be worse” and that significant majorities across the Middle East view Bush as a greater threat to world order than Osama Bin Laden? If the United States is indeed a benevolent force for change, then why is America increasingly being viewed in the Middle East as “less a beacon of hope than a dangerous force to be countered”?

** Kareem M. Kamel is an Egyptian analyst based in Cairo, Egypt. He holds an MA in International Relations from the American University in Cairo and is specialized in security studies, decision-making, nuclear politics, and Middle East politics. He is currently a PhD candidate at the American University in London, and a teaching assistant to the Political Science Department at the American University in Cairo.