book review

Review Reviewed Work(s): The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization by Richard W. Bulliet Review by: Johannes J. G. Jansen Source: The International History Review, Vol. 27, No. 4 (Dec., 2005), pp. 931-932 Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40109739 Accessed: 04-09-2016 18:14 UTC

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Richard W. Bulliet. The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. Pp. viii, 187. $24.50 (us).

Reviews of Books 931

Being siblings or even twins does not always guarantee fraternal harmony and co-operation. Yet this is what Richard W. Bulliet appears to suggest in his new book that sets out to clarify the relations between the Islamic world on the one hand, and the United States and Europe on the other. With great scholarship and vision, he demonstrates a number of socio-religious similarities and historical parallels between these two worlds that nowadays so often seem to be at war with

one another. According to Bulliet, the similarities between the two civilizations

justify calling them 'twins' or 'siblings', and he introduces, for both of them, the term 'Islamo-Christian civilization', in the singular: 'The historical development of Western Christendom and Islam parallel each other so closely that the two faith

communities can best be thought of as two versions of a common socio-religious

system' (p. 16). In spite of his great scholarship, Bulliet here seems to have overlooked a num-

ber of well-known and almost proverbial fratricides. Cain murdered his brother Abel; the brothers Romulus and Remus founded Rome together, perhaps in 753 bc, but Romulus killed Remus. Caliph Amin was killed in ad 809 by the armies of

his brother, Caliph Al-Ma'mun. Being brothers does not preclude murder or the use of fatal force. So even if Bulliet is right about the consanguinity of Islam and

the West (and he probably is), this does not necessarily make the world a safer place. After all, the political systems of the former Soviet Union and the United States are both the offspring of the Enlightenment; nevertheless, during the cold

war years these two systems made spirited attempts to put an end to each other. Bulliet is concerned about the present enmity between the West and the rest,

and he abhors the term 'clash of civilizations', introduced by Bernard Lewis and

popularized by Samuel Huntington. Bulliet's concern is genuine and should be shared, but it should not make us forget that the great majority of the inhabitants of

the Middle East do see the present conflicts as a 'clash of civilizations'. Western assurances that it cannot possibly be so, as Western civilization is open to all, ir-

respective of religion or creed, are frequent; however, these assurances are not generally seen as believable by people in the Middle East.

Bulliet, among many other things, argues that 'a comparable decline in religious

naming took place in Massachusetts, Turkey, and Iran' (tables on pp. 76-9). This, according to him, 'indicates] an ebbing of religion as a focus of public life' (p. 75). However, in the case of Massachusetts, only Old Testament names are seen as

religious names (p. 164), names like Ezekiel, Jehoshaphat, and Jeremiah. What is wrong with Mark, Matthew, Luke, John, Peter, Paul, or Joseph, as religious names

from a Christian viewpoint? Or would the addition to the tables of these names have made the statistical results less significant or similar to each other?

For Muslim religious names in Turkey, Bulliet selected only Mehmet, Ahmet,

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932 The International History Review

and Ali, whereas if one chooses these three names, Mustafa, another common ap-

pellation of the Prophet Muhammad, should definitely have been included as well. Also, it is difficult to see why the many names consisting of Abd ('servant') followed by one of the names of God (names like Abd al-Hamid) should not be seen as Islamic religious names. It is hard to say whether such imperfections (if they are imperfections) invalidate Bulliet's conclusions, but they do not make his

case more convincing. Many readers will take offence at a passage on page 45: 'The case for Islamo-

Christian civilization rests more immediately on the need of all Americans to find

common ground with our Muslim diaspora communities at a time when suspicion,

fear, draconian government action, and demagoguery increasingly threaten to divide us.' This list is strangely incomplete. 'Terrorism committed in the name of Islam by a number of ruthless men' should have been included in this enumeration of divisive factors that threaten harmonious coexistence of Muslims and non-

Muslims. After the attack on the United States in September 2001, and the assas-

sination of Theo van Gogh in Amsterdam by a Dutch-Moroccan Muslim in November 2004, for example, this should have been obvious.

Nevertheless, Bulliet offers rare insights in the Islamic and the (post)-Christian worlds for which his readers will be thankful.

University of Utrecht Johannes I. G. I ansen

P. W. Singer. Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2003. Pp. xi, 330. $39.95 (us).

The end of the cold war in the early 1990s saw the emergence of a new kind of military actor in international politics: transnational corporations that provide a

range of military services to a range of clients, including governments, non-govern-

mental organizations, and inter-governmental organizations. The rise of these firms generated a considerable literature, including William Reno's Warlord Pol-

itics and African States (1998); The Privatisation of Security in Africa, ed. Greg Mills and John Stremlau (1999); and James R. Davis's Fortune's Warriors: Private Armies and the New World Order (2000).

However, there has never been agreement on what to call these firms. Often

they are simply dismissed as 'mercenaries' or 'corporate dogs of war', particularly in the popular press, even though these companies are fundamentally unlike trad- itional mercenaries. According to the Geneva Convention's cumbersome cumula- tive definition, a mercenary is a person who

is specially recruited locally or abroad in order to fight in an armed conflict; does, in fact,

take part in the hostilities; is motivated to take part in the hostilities essentially by the desire

for private gain and, in fact, is promised, by or on behalf of a party to the conflict, material compensation substantially in excess of that promised or paid to combatants of similar

xxvii. 4: December 2005

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