ENDORSEMENTS


This book couldn't be more timely. As democratic revolutions continue to roar across the Arab world, Harms's book should be required reading for anyone seeking to pierce through the arrogance and ignorance that for so long has allowed our own leaders to launch wars and support brutal regimes across the region without considering the costs, not just for the peoples of the Arab and larger Muslim world, but for us as well.

— Mark LeVine, University of California, Irvine

. . .

Gregory Harms's It's Not about Religion is a masterful analysis of the relationship between religion and terrorism in the Middle East. In a thoroughly engaging and accessible volume, he analyzes and demonstrates that the origins of grievances in the Middle East are not religious but the product of the politics of the Middle East and the conduct of American foreign policy.

— John L. Esposito, Georgetown University

. . .

For anyone wishing to understand the disconnect between the protests of the "Arab Spring" that have so inspired us all and the Western image of the Middle East as an eternally fundamentalist, freedom-hating backwater, this book is for you. An informative, lively, and humane look at the real sources of conflict and struggle in the region.

— Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine

. . .

Gregory Harms's It's Not about Religion is a welcome breath of reason in the midst of our continued and willful ignorance about all things Islamic, Middle Eastern, and especially, Muslim. Important and timely.

— Nick Flynn, award-winning writer and poet

. . .

Underlying the problems that beset U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East is a deep and abiding popular ignorance of that region. Gregory Harms's new book - short, readable, and accurate - is the perfect curative for this uneducated state. To the extent that this work is read and acted upon, the future of U.S.-Middle East relations should improve.

— Lawrence Davidson, West Chester University