Roxanne Euben. Enemy in the Mirror: Islamic Fundamentalism and the Limits of Modern Rationalism. A Work of Comparative Political Theory. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999. xv + 239 pp., notes, bibliography, index.

Extract

Intellectual practice is marked by a central asymmetry: we explain the beliefs of others with social scientific theories of causation, but do not seek similar causes for our own (self-evidently more reasonable) ideas. So the “fundamentalist” writings of martyred Egyptian intellectual Sayyid Qutb are normally analyzed as outgrowths of anti-colonial struggle, eroding economic opportunity, official corruption, and changing patterns of education and migration. But the thoughts of Daniel Bell, Hannah Arendt, and Alasdair MacIntyre are examined for their keen insights into the malaise of late modernity. The ideas of Western cultural critics, in other words, have meaning, while those of Muslim cultural critics have only function.