Ted Thornton
Readings For Discussions of the World After 9/11





During the final week, we'll be doing some reading about the world since 9/11, we'll have some discussions about these readings, and we'll look at some more film material. Your reading assignments are mapped out day by day below.

No formal written responses are planned as of the moment, but we reserve the option to change our minds. Unless we say otherwise, jot a few lines on each article in which you express an opinion or raise a question or both.

We may make some changes to the readings along the way, too, so check this web page each day.

See also "Arab Responses to Terror" (and the links at the bottom of that page).

 

Monday, May 30:

"The Middle East After 9/11" (Middle East History Database)

Arab Responses to Terrorism, May, 2003

Muslim Conference on Terror, Kuala Lampur, April, 2002

Wahhabism and Deobandism (from course materials Models of Islamic Revivalism)

Tariq Ali, "Kingdom of Corruption" (American Academy of Religion and ZNet)

Michael Klare on Oil  (The Progressive, June, 2002)

 

Tuesday, May 31:

Karen Armstrong, "Have We All Been Hijacked? (Beliefnet.com)

Bernard Lewis, "What Went Wrong?" (Atlantic Monthly, January, 2002-- available only through NMH Virtual Desktop link to Library and ProQuest Database)

Hamza Yusuf, "A Time for Introspection (Islam For Today, October, 2001)

Fareed Zakaria:  The Politics of Rage: Why do They Hate Us?

 

Wednesday, June 1: "The Chomsky-Hitchens Debate" in The Nation

Hitchens, "Against Rationalization," Sept. 20, 2001

Chomsky, "Reply to Hitchens,"Oct. 1, 2001

Hitchens, "A Rejoinder to Noam Chomsky," Oct. 4, 2001

Chomsky, "Reply to Hitchens' Rejoinder," Oct. 4, 2001

 

Thursday, June 2:

Benjamin Barber, "Beyond Jihad Vs. McWorld" (The Nation, Jan. 21, 2002)

Ian Buruma, The Origins of Occidentalism, Chronicle of Higher Education

Michael Lerner (The Nation, May 22, 2002)

Summary of Pew Research Center "Views of a Changing World 2003"

 

Optional Recommended Reading:

Osama bin Laden (at History of the Middle East Database)

Additional Articles at University of Georgia

Niall Ferguson, "The Nation that Fell to Earth," (Time, Sep. 3, 2006)

Gilles Kepel, Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam, trans. by Anthony F. Roberts  (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press at Harvard University Press, 2002)

Bernard Lewis, "License to Kill: Osama bin Laden's Declaration of Jihad," Foreign Affairs, Nov/Dec, 1998, vol. 77, no. 6, 14ff. (via ProQuest, only on the NMH Virtual Desktop)

Bernard Lewis, "The Revolt of Islam," The New Yorker, Nov. 19, 2001

Ahmed Rashid, Jihad:  The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia (New Haven: Yale University, Press, 2002)

Ahmed Rashid, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil, and Fundamentalism in Central Asia (New York: Yale Nota Bene, 2000)

Max Rodenbeck, "Their Master's Voice," (a review of two recent books about Osama bin Laden) New York Review of Books, vol. 53, no. 4, March 9, 2006

New York Times Nine-Eleven Oral History Project (part of NYT complete coverage of Nine-Eleven)

Ted Thornton, The Political and Religious Landscape of the Middle East at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century

Back to Islamic Middle East Syllabus


 

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email: tthornton@nmhschool.org

Last Revised: March 26, 2008