Caryle Murphy, winner of the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting, has been a Washington Post reporter for more than twenty years, serving twice as an overseas correspondent: first in South Africa and then in the Middle East. She covered Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, spending a month in the occupied emirate, and reported from Saudi Arabia during the 1991 Gulf War. She currently covers religion for the Post and lives in Washington, D.C.
Judy WoodruffCNNCaryle Murphy takes us by the hand and introduces
us to the people who are helping determine the future course of
Islam. With her own passion for reporting and storytelling, she
pulls us inside a world strange and forbidding to many Americans,
but nevertheless vital for us to understand. She shows brilliantly
how we have as much reason to hope for enlightenment and peace from
the many corners of Islam as we do to fear more September
11ths.
Lee H. Hamiltondirector, Woodrow Wilson International Center for
Scholars and former chairman, House Committee on International
RelationsDrawing on her vast experience living and reporting in
Egypt, Caryle Murphy provides a sweeping account of Islam's
powerful and complicated role in the Middle East. "Passion for
Islam" illuminates the forces that have led to religious terrorism,
and in doing so offers a vision for how these forces could be
harnessed for peace and progress.
Leslie H. Gelbpresident, Council on Foreign RelationsIn fine
journalistic brushstrokes, Caryle Murphy lets you see how the
Islamists would like to see themselves -- in all their subtle
varieties and degrees of piety and lethality. While I assign more
to the Islamists than the author for creating their own ills and
ours, Murphy brings us much closer to Muslim minds, otherwise often
caricatured in the West.
Raghida Derghamcolumnist for "Al-Hayat"Rarely does a book on
religion and politics combine such journalistic excellence,
impeccable research, and compelling stories. Each paragraph is a
frame of history told meticulously with courage, fairness, and
innovation.
Richard W. Murphysenior fellow, Middle East Council on Foreign
RelationsThis is a timely, solid, and highly readable account by
Caryle Murphy of conflicts within Islamic intellectual and
religious circles as their leaders seek to relate their faith to
today's changing political and economic conditions. Their attempts
to create a modern Islamic society have led to tensions with the
Egyptian government. In relating Egyptian developments to those in
the broader Arab world, she persuasively demolishes the
conventional wisdom that Egypt is unique and that Islam is
monolithic. This book provides altogether a valuable set of
insights for readers interested in getting beyond the stereotypical
descriptions of Islamic thought advanced by both friends and
critics of Islam in recent years.
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