From Postmodernism to Postsecularism: Re-emerging Islamic Civilization - Softcover

Walberg, Eric

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0985335386 ISBN 13: 9780985335380

Publisher: Clarity Press, Inc., 2013

Synopsis

NEW WALBERG BOOK A GATEWAY TO UNDERSTANDING ISLAM Eric Walberg's new book From Postmodernism to Postsecularism: Re-emerging Islamic Civilization provides an overview of imperialism and colonialism in the Muslim world. It elaborates on the third of the Great Games addressed in his earlier work, Postmodern Imperialism, which traced the movement of history from the colonialism of the British and other empires, through the neocolonialism of the US empire, to the current Great Game marked by the revival of Islam. Walberg reviews the Islamic reform traditions from the 19th century on (deriving from Al-Afghani, Qutb) incorporating the Islamic critique of the West as well as the Sunni/ Shia, mainstream/ Sufi/ Salafi divisions. Then he addresses the twentieth century experience of Islamic states (Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran), as well as the current dynamics of the Muslim world (Saudi, Iran, Qatar, Turkey, and now Egypt/ Tunisia/ Libya). Key actors and milestones in the struggle to free the Muslim world from the imperial yoke are discussed. While the Christian/Judaic surrender to capitalism led to Marxist secularism and the communist utopia, Walberg views the Islamic project as containing an alternative socio-economic orientation. This prevented the rise of capitalism/ imperialism in lands populated by Muslims, making them the losers in the technology race of the 19th-20th centuries, but the repository of a corrected vision of the rich lost values of the earlier monotheistic traditions. Here modernity and postmodernism are critiqued from both left and right, and Islam is discussed as both an alternative worldview and world order. However the contradictions of the Arab Spring may be resolved as the West continues its decline, Walberg projects how the understandings entrenched in Islamic civilization point toward a new-old civilizational alternative, one not derivative from the West, but indigenous to the developing world still under its heel.

About this title

About the Author

Canadian Eric Walberg is known worldwide as a journalist specializing in the Middle East, Central Asia and Russia. Presently a writer for the foremost Cairo newspaper, Al Ahram, he is also a regular contributor to Counterpunch, Dissident Voice, Global Research, Al-Jazeerah and Turkish Weekly, and is a commentator on Voice of the Cape radio. His articles appear in Russian, German, Spanish and Arabic and are accessible at his website ericwalberg.com. Walberg was a moderator and speaker at the Leaders for Change Summit www.leadersofchangesummit.org in Istanbul in 2011. His book, Postmodern Imperialism, is published in Chinese, Turkish and Russian. He is a graduate of University of Toronto and Cambridge in economics.

Edition details

• Publisher: Clarity Press, Inc.
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0985335386
• ISBN 13: 9780985335380
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368