What’s the Matter in the Middle East?

Believe it or not, there’s a logical explanation to everything. Including the middle-east crisis.

If we weren’t in a global recession—or just coming out of it—the crisis in the Middle East might have been the second Cold War with different actors.

If the world could afford another war, we would have been in it right now.

In Akbar Ahmed’s Journey into Islam, the former high commissioner of Pakistan to Israel unveils the fundamental misunderstandings and discrepancies between Western and Middle Eastern viewpoints. With two of his students from the American University, Washington D.C., Ahmed surveys the Islamic region from Turkey to Indonesia. Their travels take them to Turkey, Qatar, Syria, Jordan, Pakistan, India, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Each voyage is woven into a systematically logical message that urges both the Western and Middle Eastern worlds to learn more about each other.

The book is an anthropological study, a cultural expedition and a series of religious dialogues. The dialogues are facilitated by the western travelers: Ahmed himself, two non-Muslim undergraduate students—one male and the other female—and a female Arab-American research assistant from the US.

A common theme that is highlighted throughout the book is “the clash of civilizations,” as put forth by Samuel P. Huntington. Ahmed recognizes the strained discrepancies between Islamic and Western ideologies but for the most part, maintains an optimistic front. His ideas ooze a desperate plea to consolidate these differences, and with good reason, as he is a westerner of the Islamic world. Gone are the days that the West could live on its own political and economic space. Globalization now means that America will have to work with the Arabs, Persians and Indians.

The mission of the four takes them deep into the minds of Muslims in the Middle East: they sit and talk with any person that will bother to discuss with them. The coolest part of the dialogue is not only that the American undergraduates get to comprehend and appreciate the stances of the Muslims, but also that Middle Eastern Muslims also get to empathize with the Americans. It is beautiful that in the end, no “good” or “bad” side emerges, that labels either the West or the Middle East as the victor of moral principles.

Staying true to his diplomatic profession, Akbar Ahmed skillfully takes his reader on a “Journey Into Islam” and accompanies the reader through mosques, madrassahs, and shrines in the Islamic world to decide for themselves what needs to be done to narrow the rift between the West and the Middle east, as there is no doubt that a rift exists between both regions. As a thorough anthropologist, Ahmed provides political context for his arguments—there is a logical explanation to what people do.

Perhaps due to the basis and aim of the book, one major flaw exists—the book was simply written for the west. What pre-set notions existed before Ahmed set pen to paper in an attempt to unveil Islam in the Middle East? Nonetheless, the author address this in the sequel to the book, which will be titled “Journey into America.”