True and False Faces

The Two Faces of Islam: The House of Saud from Tradition to Terror, by Stephen Schwartz (Doubleday, 288 pp., $25)

MORE than a year after the tragic events of 9/11, the debate about the causes of Islamic terrorism continues unabated. On one side of this debate, the blame-America-first crowd—consisting of the usual loony-Left suspects, along with assorted moral relativists and postmodernist progressives—sees American foreign policy and, more specifically, U.S. support for Israel as the root cause of the problem. They argue that being pro-Israel, coupled with the alleged legacy of Western exploitation of the Muslim masses and the “new imperialism” of globalization, explains the unfortunate, but understandable, violent reaction of the downtrodden against their American oppressors. Curiously, in propounding this theory the progressives find themselves in bed with some very nonprogressive fellows, including Saudi princes and various other Arab potentates.

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About the Author

Alex Alexiev

Mr. Alexiev is an adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C.

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The Two Faces of Islam: The House of Saud from Tradition to Terror, by Stephen Schwartz (Doubleday, 288 pp., $25)

MORE than a year after the tragic events of 9/11, the debate about the causes of Islamic terrorism continues unabated. On one side of this debate, the blame-America-first crowd—consisting of the usual loony-Left suspects, along with assorted moral relativists and postmodernist progressives—sees American foreign policy and, more specifically, U.S. support for Israel as the root cause of the problem. They argue that being pro-Israel, coupled with the alleged legacy of Western exploitation of the Muslim masses and the “new imperialism” of globalization, explains the unfortunate, but understandable, violent reaction of the downtrodden against their American oppressors. Curiously, in propounding this theory the progressives find themselves in bed with some very nonprogressive fellows, including Saudi princes and various other Arab potentates.