Author(s): Jonathan Raban

Current Affairs & Politics

Struck by memories of his own adolesecent atheism, Jonathan Raban felt he had some understanding of why young people suffering from cultural alienation and moral uncertainty might turn to a backward-looking version of Islam as one way to resist the upheavals of modernity. Yet this understanding was largely - and noticably - absent from any government or political discussions of the issue. In My Holy War, Raban reflects on the Bush administration's manipulation of the threat of terrorism to undermine civil rights, emphasizing the US failure to understand the history of the Middle East, and explaining the region's shifting and complex loyalties of religion and ethnicity. He traces the continuing support for a disastrous war to the legacy of American Puritanism: the tendency of Americans to be inspired by a religious fervour oblivious to history and reason. As such, My Holy War is a book most certainly written in a post 9/11 America, written in light of the war in Iraq, in a new era of religious ferocity, and in the context of modern-day jihad. First published 2006.