“Islam Through Western Eyes” webcast from Library of Congress
March 28, 2012 
My recent book talk at the Library of Congress has been posted on the LOC Web site. Here's the link:http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=5466
“Writers Read” takes a peek at my reading list
What have I been reading lately? Check out the Writers Read blog to find out.
Islam Through Western Eyes on Juan Cole’s ‘Informed Comment’ blog
Islam, Women, and the West (originally posted on Informed Comment. See the full text here. [...] By the early twentieth century, the institution of veiling had for the most part supplanted the more exotic harem as the focal point of Western attention. Still, the underlying logic of the discourse of Islam and women remains firmly in place today. The end result has been a “sexualization” of the Western view of Islam, one in which the totality of Muslim beliefs and practices and even the entire Islamic civilization are too often reduced to Western perceptions and assessment of the male–female dynamic. Exhibit ...
Boston Globe calls Islam Through Western Eyes “mercilessly iconoclastic”
From The Boston Globe review of Islam Through Western Eyes on January 22, 2012: If you think you have an original, perceptive opinion concerning Islam, you might want to think again. According to Jonathan Lyons, author of “Islam Through Western Eyes: From the Crusades to the War on Terrorism,’’ an ossified, immutable “anti-Islam discourse’’ has been propagated over the centuries by a diverse relay team of elite opinion-makers whose most obvious manifestation has become the self-proclaimed Islam expert. As a result, many Westerners have come to believe: “that Islam is inherently violent and spread by the sword; that Muslims are irrational, antiscience, ...
Islam Through Western Eyes takes the ‘Page 99 Test’
My new book, Islam Through Western Eyes: From the Crusades to the War on Terrorism, appears in a recent installment of the Page 99 Test blog. This book lovers' blog seeks to try out Ford Maddox Ford's notion that opening a random book to page 99 should give the reader the full flavor of the entire text. Read all about it here: The Page 99 Test: Islam Through Western Eyes.
On Sale Now: Islam Through Western Eyes (Columbia University Press)
From the book jacket: Despite the West's growing involvement in Muslim societies, conflicts, and cultures, its inability to understand or analyze the Islamic world threatens any prospect for East–West rapprochement. Impelled by one thousand years of anti-Muslim ideas and images, the West has failed to engage in any meaningful or productive way with the world of Islam. Formulated in the medieval halls of the Roman Curia and courts of the European Crusaders and perfected in the newsrooms of Fox News and CNN, this anti-Islamic discourse determines what can and cannot be said about Muslims and their religion, trapping the West in ...
OWS and the discourse of “terrorism”
Perhaps in another era Mayor Michael Bloomberg's assertion that "public health and safety" take absolute precedence over the First Amendment protection of free speech would have raised more than a few liberal eyebrows. In a statement issued after the mayor ordered the forcible eviction of OWS from a New York park, Bloomberg sought to justify his actions and those of his heavily-armed police as follows: “From the beginning, I have said that the City had two principal goals: guaranteeing public health and safety, and guaranteeing the protestors’ First Amendment rights. “But when those two goals clash, the health ...
‘Republic of Fear’: from 9/11 to the nightly weather forecast
Breathless warnings of coming weather catastrophe, as witnessed this past weekend here in the mid-Atlantic, have become such as staple of daily forecasts that we often overlook just how much they are of a piece with the broader public discourse that has steadily turned America into a 'republic of fear.' The local District of Columbia government sends out a near-continuous stream of "alerts" that rarely seem to bear any resemblance to life on the ground but give the distinct impression that we are all living on borrowed time. Elsewhere, some public radio stations have taken to breaking into regular broadcasts with ...
‘Peace’ and ‘stability’ in the Middle East
The unrest sweeping the Mideast is a long overdue reminder of the human, economic, and political cost of U.S. policy in the region over many, many decades. Strong support for dictatorial Arab leaders, especially in Egypt and Jordan, enforced an unpopular 'peace' deal with Israel and guaranteed the sidelining of Palestinian claims. Similar support in the so-called Petro States ensured a steady and reliable flow of oil. Elsewhere, as in Bahrain, anti-democratic regimes have been propped up in exchange for valuable access by U.S. military forces. And everywhere, the globalized war on terrorism deepened existing ties between Washington and unsavory regimes ...
House of Wisdom at ‘Mind the Book’ Festial in Antwerp
I'll be speaking at the Mind the Book festival in Antwerp, on March 6, with a few lectures in Holland en route, including an evening at University of Leyden. The Dutch-language edition, Het Huis der Wijsheid, is doing well in Holland and Flanders.
