Jihad, Radicalism, and the New Atheism

Jihad, Radicalism, and the New Atheism 

 Mohammad Hassan Khalil  

on amazon

"One of this book's key insights is that liberalism can also be rather fundamentalistic in its scope and approach, and that the so-called New Atheists such as Sam Harris have even more violent and radical readings of the Quran than the jihadis themselves. Thus, the author argues, there are very few real differences in extremes when we look at the discourses of radical liberals/New Atheists and those of the jihadis. This is reminiscent of a point made by Seyyed Hossein Nasr in his book written in 1987, Traditional Islam in the Modern World (re-issued in 2010 as Islam in the Modern World). There, Nasr shows how modernism (liberalism being modernism's logical extension) and fundamentalism are two sides of the same coin, sharing in common, among other things, the rejection of tradition." -  Mohammed Rustom, Associate Professor, College of the Humanities,Carleton University

"Mohammad Khalil's critique of the "new atheists" is compelling, rational, and hard-hitting without veering into polemics. The result is a highly lucid, carefully argued and engaging book on a very timely topic that has been begging for such a level-headed, scholarly treatment." - Asma Afsaruddin, Professor of Near Eastern Languages & Cultures, Indiana University

"...[N]o work has to this point looked at jihadist discourses on war and New Atheist discourses on Islam together as a shared narrative around what it means to be genuinely motivated by religion in modern Islam. Mohammad Khalil's book does just that, and it should be required reading for anyone looking for a way out of the Manicheanism of both jihadism and certain kinds of anti-religious discourse." - Andrew F. March, Law and Social Change Fellow, Islamic Legal Studies Program, Harvard Law School