A secular history if Islam: adapted from Tariq Ali’s forthcoming book, The Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity, a fascinating attempt to grapple with the intersecting trends, some dating from the time of Mohammed himself, that explain why Islam has never undergone a Reformation, why it was not touched by the Enlightenment, and why its clashes with the West, from the Crusades to Sept. 11th, have been of a fundamentalist variety.

“It was the discovery of black gold underneath the Arabian desert that provided the old religion with the means and wherewithal to revive its culture while Britain created new sultans and emirs to safeguard their newest and most precious commodity. Throughout the 20th century, the West, to safeguard its own economic interests, supported the most backward, despotic and reactionary survivals from the past, helping to defeat all forms of secularism. As we know, the story is unfinished.” London Review of Books