The Arab World

The book is formally divided into two sections. The first eight chapters, collectively called "Failure," combine a summary of modern Arab history with a survey of what Field considers the problems facing the contemporary Arab world. The remaining twelve chapters, called "Reform," deal with the Arabs' various responses to their contemporary situation.

Both the strengths and the weaknesses of book as a whole are aptly encapsulated by Chapters 2, 3, and 4, which summarize the modern history of the Arab world. To Americans, whose picture of the history of the Middle East is likely to begin with the Arab-Israeli wars, with only the haziest knowledge of "Lawrence of Arabia," some summary of the previous colonial period is surely helpful.

Field gives an good, concise account of the complex jockeying for position between the British and the French in the Middle East during and after the First World War. There is a certain flavor of bias toward the British (Field previously wrote for the London Financial Times, and may well be British himself), a bias that expresses itself more in his treatment of the French. He appears to be tolerably objective in recounting the less-than-honest

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, and horrified by the low level of support that individuals expect from their families and the community around them (p. 316). However, Field often slips over a subtle line, from noting experiences such as the above, which are indeed quite common, to more sweeping generalizations, such as that "the Arabs are different in their understanding of their place in society, in their loyalties, and in their view of their rights and obligations" (p. 115). One wishes to ask, are all Arabs equally so, or are some Arabs more so than others? And which ones? Field's weakness for breezy generalities is never more evident in his treatment of Islam. Almost every Western writer dealing with Islam says, at some point, that Islam is a "way of life" rather than a religion in the narrow Western sense. It is no surprise to find Field saying the same thing: Islam, for Sunnis especially, is as much a law, setting out rules for every aspect of life, from how to wash to how to govern an Islamic community, as it is a religion, in the sense that Christians understand the idea. Compared with Christianity there is more emphasis on carrying out God's instructions in daily life and less on understanding and believing spiritual mysteries (pp. 13-14
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Approximate Word count = 1856
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)

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