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Raja continuedfrom previous page American ieview claims. About the history of Islam and Western colonialism , he suggests, "Western transgressions were limited both in severity and longevity and. . .were insufficient as a causative factorto explain the landscape of the modern Middle East." Regarding the crusades, me author questions, "Why does the Islamic world dwell on the relative pinprick of the European Crusades inthe Levant, an effortthat pales when compared to the Mongol invasion" of Islamic lands? Hence, in comparison to other imperial atrocities, the author suggests, Islam has no real claim to a real grievance against the West, as the impact ofWestern aggression was not as great as that ofother military ventures in the Islamic lands. For the author, then, "Western imperialism was not the cause ofthe Islamic world's problems. It was the latter's refusal to modernize that is the root cause of the frictions between the Near East and the West today." The author completely forgets that history is also dialectical and one group's perception of other is always in concert with the past, present, and the future. It is this contingency that drives the general Muslim view ofme West andAmerica. The reason the modern Muslim scholars defined their politics in the form ofa return to the basics ofIslam was notjust that they hated Europe, but because modernity was introduced in the Muslim world under a colonial mandate. The scholars, mus, challenged this colonial mandate, and it is this drive of political Islam that was caused by colonialism, and it is because of this that colonial experience is one of the most significant experiences in defining Muslim modernity. In fact, Sayyid Abul A'la Mawdudi, one such radical scholar that the author cites, captures the intellectual and political aspects of colonial power as follows: The Muslims of today are caught in this dual slavery: In someplaces they are under the sway ofboth the intellectual and political slavery, and at other places the degree ofmental slavery is higher than that ofpolitical slavery. Unfortunately, there is not even a single Muslim community in the world that is completely free intellectually or politically. Wherever they are politically free, they are still mentally enslaved. Their schools, offices, bazaars, societies, homes, and even their bodies symbolize the power of Western thought, Western knowledge, and Western know-how. They think with the Western mind, see with the Western eyes, and walk, consciously or unconsciously, on the paths created by the West. In all, it has been imprinted on their minds that truth is what the West considers truth and false is what the West considers false. (Tanqihat, 1939, my translation from the Urdu) It was this hegemonic aspect of colonialism that scholars like Mawdudi challenged in their work, and, hence, for them, Muslim modernity came to be defined againstthe political domination oftheWestern colonial powers. Considering Mawdudi the father of modern Islamic radicalism, the author reads just one of Mawdudi's works (Jihadfil Islam, 1930) and forgets to inform us that most of Mawdudi's critics did not consider him a revolutionary. Mawdudi himself, in the book cited above, preferred a moderate method of challenging the colonial masters as opposed to a revolutionary approach. Absent also in this discussion of Islam's modern radical prophets is any mention of the mainstream scholars who had worked and are working to articulate and disseminate a more diverse and modern version of Islam. Hence, surprisingly, while Sayyid Qutb is cited at the beginning ofeach chapter, and one finds frequent references to Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, not even a single reference can be found to the works of Muhammad Iqbal, Sayyid Ahmad Khan, Rashid Rida, Amir Ali, Sayed Jammaluddin Afghani, Zia Gokalp, and Muhammad Abduh, some major names in recent Islamic history famous for what can be termed the mainstream of various currents of Muslim modernity. It seems as if the author needs the most radical examples from Islam in order to rationalize the latest American military adventure in the Middle East, the current Iraq War. Modernity was introduced in the Muslim world under a colonial mandate. Having used most ofthe book in building a narrative of two competing world systems—Islamism andAmericanism—the author...