Warriors of the Prophet: The Struggle for Islam

In these probing dispatches, Financial Times Cairo correspondent Huband examines how Islam has reasserted itself in global politics, presenting the views of political figures, dissidents and Muslim scholars in Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia to show the evolution of the ""Islamic Revival."" In Algeria, a resurgent Islamist movement of anti-French intellectuals, the unemployed and militant veterans of Afghanistan's mujahideen attacks Algeria's political/military elite for perpetuating colonialism through its ties to French business interests. In Sudan, a nine-year experiment to build an Islamic theocratic state has brought stagnation to a country ravaged by a civil war that has claimed a million lives. In the patchwork of warring clans that Somalia comprises, armed Islamic groups vie for a role in government, claiming that only the implementation of Muhammad's original teachings will save the nation from further anarchy. Huband argues that contemporary militant Islam represents a historic phase of the evolving religion. Huband's emphasis is intentionally on the more radical, militant end of the spectrum, rather than on the mainstream, but his survey still subverts the conventional Western view of Islam as a homogenous movement intent upon returning to an idealized past. (Sept.)