This volume sets out to reject anti-Islamic views of a future dominated by the conflict between Islam and the West . It has been revised to encompass the events of 11 September 2001, spiralling violence in the Middle East and President George Bush’s proposed identification of an axis of evil . Considering the sources of Islamic militancy and analyzing the confrontational rhetoric of both Islamic and anti-Muslim demagogues, Halliday provides an alternative, critical, but cautious, reassessment. The Middle East, he argues, can be treated neither as a distinct nor as a unified region, but must be seen as a set of disparate societies, facing and reacting to the problems of economic development and political change.