In my temporary reading program about Islam, this was by far the most interesting book I read. Ali Allawi is an Iraqi Shiite who spent most of his life in exile in England, received a training as a civil engineer and became an economics professor in Oxford. Through his family ties with the highly controversial Ahmad Chalabi (the main instigator of the invented stories about the weapons of mass destruction of Saddam Hussein), he observed various ministerial posts in the Iraqi government between 2003 and 2006, when it was actually under American guardianship. It seems that after that commitment Allawi with disgust turned away from politics and immersed himself in a fundamental reflection on the future of Islam civilization. This book is the result of that reflection. It was published in 2009, after the severe terrorist attacks in the US, the UK and Spain and after the complete anarchy in Iraq itself, but before the rise of the terror organisation Islamic State.
The content of this book is too rich to cover all aspects of it in this review. For clarity's sake: Allawi rigorously distances himself from the traditionalist and fundamentalist movements within Islam that only rely on a narrow interpretation of sharia and jihad. Very striking is his visceral aversion to the Wahhabist-Salafist movement with which Saudi Arabia has poisoned the entire Islam world (his words). But Allawi is also clear in his analysis that it is the confrontation with Western imperialism and the secular modernity that has brought the civilization of Islam into a deep crisis; for him the secularity is just ravaging. In that sense, he rejects any concession and adaptation to that modernity. The most interesting part is where he gives an overview of the various thinkers and movements that have tried or are still trying to give shape to "modern Islam"; they are many more numerous than I thought and some of them have worked out really valuable views, but from Allawi's argument I can conclude that almost all of those attempts have failed (in most cases, the thinkers involved lost their lives or have been marginalized).
For Allawi, any attempt to modernize Islam will inevitably end with the elimination of the essence of Islam itself. So you can safely say that his argument is fairly pessimistic. He tries to counter that by constantly underlining the need to reconnect with the true spirituality of Islam; with that he automatically ends up in Sufi domain, that is the rather mystical movement within Islam. This connection is strange, because Sufism has a strong tendency to focus on individual spirituality and thus seems to be inclined towards an Islam that withdraws into private life . And that is exactly what Allawi rejects time and time again, because according to him the uniqueness of Islam is precisely that faith, inner spirituality and social order are inextricably linked, which means that Islam must also have a public character in all cases. What he writes about this is particularly fascinating, but at the same time you notice the constant ambiguity that is present in this book, his insisting on a religiously inspired social order but at the same time knowing well that it is not compatible with secular modernity (or at least not to the extent that Allawi would like). By the way, it is a problem that all established religions face.
As mentioned, Allawi is actually very pessimistic: according to him, the Muslim faith in itself is still very thriving and alive, but the chance that someday a genuine Islamic civilization will resurface is very small. He makes some suggestions in that direction, but you constantly notice that he actually no longer believes in it himself. Remarkably, at the end, he refers to the Tablighi Jamaat and the Fethullah Gülen movements as the most promising attempts to rebuild an Islamic society. This are two very divergent movements with sometimes controversial points of view and activities, which confirmed my suspicion that islam still has a long way to go.
This book may be somewhat dated (it’s 10 years old now), and it sometimes suffers from a lack of editing, but it contains a wealth of information and opinions, and foremost it bears witness to the sincere quest of a deeply religious Muslim to find a way out of the severe crisis the Muslim world is going through. ( )