The closing of the Muslim mind: How intellectual suicide created the modern Islamist crisis (*)

Author: Robert R. Reilly

Book Review by: Ziad Hafez (**)

Published By: ISI Books

Year of publication: 2010

Number of Pages: 244

ISBN: 1-933859-91-1

eISBN: 978-1-933-85991-0

Abstract:

This is not a ‘new’ book. It has been around for five years. Usually this reviewer would not haveconsidered reviewing a book that has been in bookshops or on the web after two years of itspublication. However, its importance warrants the review, especially since it was published onthe eve of popular upheaval against corrupt autocratic governments subordinate to the West. Itis ‘a must’ read, not only because of its scholarly work, and not because it received much attentionin the Arab media, but also because it reflects a frame of mind in the West viewing theArab and Muslim world through the prism of its own value system. That, in itself, is theproblem. It is an intellectual and moral problem because it reflects Eurocentrism (or a Westernizedapproach to other civilizations), on the one hand, and because it implies some sort of anunwarranted moral and intellectual superiority of the West.

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Keywords:

Muslim mind

Intellectual suicide

Islamists

Islamists Crisis