Originally published: 2004.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

While the War on Terrorism tempts Americans to perceive the relations between the West and the Islamic world as a clash of us against them, such a perspective is both inaccurate and dangerous, argues Bulliet (history, Columbia Univ.). In this clearly written book, aimed at the general reader, Bulliet subverts the confrontational "clash of civilizations" thesis, urging us to appreciate the mutually intertwined sibling relationship of the Christian and Muslim wings of a single civilization. He contends that in What Went Wrong? Bernard Lewis mistakenly presumes that contemporary Euro-American-style democracies were the goal of colonial development. Ironically, Islamic political theory, ignored by Cold War-obsessed Middle Eastern studies experts, proved prescient of the tyrannical governments common to Islamic countries today. Bulliet believes that the voices that will shape what Islam becomes in the future probably have not yet appeared but will develop from within the growing edges of Islam itself. While his interlocutors will find Bulliet insufficiently alarmed, this sane work requires a place on the library shelf alongside them.