Islam: The Fear and the Hope - Tapa dura

'A work of remarkable elegance ... provides an indispensable introduction to the 'return to Islam' --"Le Figaro" 'Should be read, for it marks with clear strong accents, the dilemma of modern Islam.... Highly recommended for all groups of readers' --"Choice" 'This is a highly significant manifesto. It continues and develops the enlightened concepts and perceptions of modernist Islam in its attempt to meet the challenge of fundamentalism' --"British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies" 'An intelligent attempt to understand a subject which has been occupying the minds of Muslims and others since the late 1970's at least ...the Islamic revival. Full of information about Islam in general and modern Islamic thinking and movements in particular Informative and analytical....' --"Journal of Islamic Studies" 'Habib Boulares assesses the contemporary social, religious and political movements which can be summed up by the term 'Islamist'. Appointed foreign minister of Tunisia at the end of 1990, Boulares lived until very recently in exile in Paris as a university lecturer. His wide-ranging survey should command respect in this revised English edition of a book originally published in French.' --"The Middle East" 'This painstaking effort of research and reflection could only have been undertaken from within, by a Muslim intellectual familiar both with political analysis and the exercise of power. Habib Boulares, a Tunisian intellectual who was several times a minister and who now teaches in Paris at the Ecole des Langues Orientales answers these difficult questions in a complex but very comprehensive book, in which the neophyte will find everything he needs and even thespecialist will discover illuminating new approaches.' --"Le Nouvel Observateur" 'A well written and cogently argued study' --"Islamic Studies "

Esther Benbassa and Jean-Christophe Attias are professors of Jewish History and Culture at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Sorbonne, Paris. In addition to their own personal works, these two outstanding Jewish scholars, whose books have been translated in many languages, already coauthored Dictionary of Jewish Civilization, Israel, the Land and the Sacred, and Self-Hatred