Bad Moon Risiing

BAD MOON RISIING A Chronicle of the Middle East Today Gilles Kepel, trans. Pascale Ghazaleh London: Saqi Books, 2003. 139pp, US$13.95 paper (ISBN 0-86356-303-1)Gilles Kepel is chair of the Middle East studies program at the Institute of Political Studies in Paris, and author of the highly acclaimed Jihad: the Trail of Political Islam. First published in French in 2000, this comprehensive and deeply instructive book argued that, while Islamist movements had been able exercise some political power by the late 1980s, the popularity of their blueprint suffered greatly in the 1990s. Islamism, argued Kepel, was neither able survive the continued repression of authoritarian governments nor, perhaps more significantly, recover from the profound rift that developed between the radicals who, fresh from the success of Afghanistan, tried replicate that experience elsewhere (Algeria and Egypt, for example) and the moderates who were trying extend a hand middle class secularists increasingly terrified by the resort violence. The English edition of Jihad came out in 2002. In its introduction, written in the aftermath of the shattering events of 11 September 2001-a time when many observers were preparing for a clash with an emboldened Islamic civilization-Kepel described the traumatic violence of Osama bin Laden in ways that underscored his general analysis of the Islamist movement's declining capacity for political mobilization. September 11 was thus portrayed, rather effectively, as a desperate attempt mobilize the masses and reverse a well-entrenched process of decline, a paroxysm of destructive violence which symbolized above all the movement's fragmentation and isolation.To further grasp the nature of the changes taking place in the Middle East, and better understand the challenges posed by 9/11, Kepel immediately returned to the field. As frequently as his 2001/2002 teaching schedule in Paris would allow, he travelled the region from Egypt the Emirates, recording his observations and conversations against the backdrop of the attack on Afghanistan. Initially published in Le Monde, this translated travelogue has some frustrating limitations-in particular, the general lack of background, context, and references (there is no bibliography, despite frequent though elliptical references academic debates). Nonetheless, Kepel's experienced eye for the telling anecdote and detail will surely reward the interested reader with helpful antidotes widespread stereotypes.Kepel's snapshots of brief visits and encounters reveal much about the largely misrepresented realities on the ground

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