After the Arab Spring How Islamists Hijacked The Middle East Revolts

by Bradley, John R.

• ISBN13: 9780230338197
• ISBN10: 0230338194
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-01-03
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Summary

When popular revolutions erupted in Tunisia and Egypt, Western pundits were quick to hail the stirrings of an Arab Spring and to draw parallels between the resulting upheaval in the Middle East and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. In The Tunisian Tsunami, John R. Bradley offers a sober counter-narrative to this outlook. It is not liberalism, democracy and pluralism that will emerge triumphant, he argues, but instead radical Islam. Bradley shows how Islamists in Tunisia and Egypt hijacked the revolutions in both countries and immediately set about imposing their fundamentalist agendas. Their counterparts in countries as diverse as Syria, Yemen, Jordan, and Libya are posited to do the same. Bradley illustrates how in a region awash with extremist Wahhabi ideology, inter-tribal rivalries and Sunni-Shia divisions, the idea that liberal and progressive trends will prevail is little more than wishful thinking.

Author Biography

John R. Bradley is a widely published British foreign correspondent. Fluent in Egyptian Arabic, he is also the author of Inside Egypt, Saudi Arabia Exposed, and Behind the Veil of Vice.

Table of Contents

Praise for Saudi Arabia Exposed:

"A highly informed, temperate, and understanding account of a country . . . that is an enigma." - The New York Times

"A thoughtful, incisive portrait of a fractured nation . . . [a] remarkable volume." - Newsweek

"Offers insight into Saudi life seldom reported in the West." - New York Post

"Contribute[s] significantly to the debate . . . Bradley had a unique vantage. Buy this book." - Los Angeles Times Book Review

For Behind the Veil of Vice:

"Drawing on extensive research as well as the author's own substantial firsthand knowledge of the region, the book offers an essential corrective to the fantasies and misinformation about Middle Eastern cultures." - Publishers Weekly