Chasing a Mirage

the long version

"In Chasing a Mirage, Tarek Fatah opens a window on the Muslim world that reveals a blighted landscape. Fatah, a Canadian Muslim born in Pakistan, argues that Islam has been hijacked by radicals who falsely invoke the Quran and Prophet Muhammad for their own political purpose that offends the spirit of Islam." "In the author's assessment, the Quran did not prescribe that Islam should take on a political form--an entity that is the Islamic State. Yet in the aftermath of the Prophet's death, two streams of Islam emerged. One was political and imperial, seeking power and domination, reverberating through the ages and resulting in bloodshed among Muslim brothers. The other Islam was spiritual, which unleashed the human spirit, triggering an age of enlightenment that once was the hallmark of science, literature, music, and mathematics. The author suggests that the crashing end to Islam's era of intellectual supremacy was a direct result of political Islam inflicting a crushing defeat of the spirit of Islam."--Jacket.