The Crisis of Islam

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FTER the Cold War, with the demise of the East-West conflict, Francis Fukuyama eagerly posited the end of history. Bassam Tibi begs to differ: The political religion of Islamism seeks a return of history when Islam ruled supreme. It begins with the 22 Arab countries of the Middle East, which are recognized as one Arab nation. All Muslims are considered part of this umma (the worldwide Muslim community). The catalyst for the umma is Islamism, a political religion.

In Islamism and Islam, historian Tibi, a senior scholar of Islamic politics, writes knowledgeably of the rise of Islamism since its beginnings in 1928, and becoming a radical force following the Arab defeat in the Six Day War of 1967. A Muslim raised in Damascus, Tibi is the Koret Foundation Senior Fellow at Stanford University, having previously worked at the University of Gottingen, Cornell, Harvard and the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism. In 2010 he was the Resnick Scholar for the Study of Antisemitism at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

Today Islamic civilization is at war with itself. This is due to a deep crisis related to "the lack of democracy combined with unsuccessful development, both attributed to the ruling authoritarian regimes." With the onset of the Arab Spring, we are living in interesting times when popular revolts for democracy are exploding all over the Arab umma. The challenge is to resist the efforts of extreme Islamist forces that attempt to subvert these winds of change in the name of a political ideology guided by jihad. This is not Islam; it is Islamism—big difference. Yale University Press, 340 pages, $30.00 Amazon.com Price: $17.05)

What Reporters Are Saying

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PEN the new book Journalese and you’ll never watch television or read your daily newspaper with the same mindset again. With this handy book you’ll be able to decipher the news and understand what reporters are talking about when they bring you what’s happening. When a reporter talks loftily about a "defining" moment, he inflates since he’s writing about it.

A reporter writes about "a decades-old" event because he "couldn’t quickly find the date online but remembered granddad talking about it."

What’s with "literally"? That’s journalese for something that actually or truly occurred. "One might assume that anything else in the story not specifically identified as literally is doubtful at best and false at worst."

We all use "attributed" which refers to a quote the authenticity of which a reporter is too busy to verify.

My favorite is "arguably." I didn’t know what it really meant until authors Paul Dickson and Robert Skole explained it in this book. When impossible to substantiate, "arguably" gives reporters the freedom to draw conclusions they wouldn’t dare on their own. No one wants to say "certainly" when such a useful fudge factor is available.

This little dictionary, an eye-opener, will help you avoid obscure journalese in your writing. Main Street Press, paperback, 104 pages, $14.95 Amazon.com Price: $11.66)