Timothy Marr and Joseph M. Hennessey believe that your "misunderstanding" of Islam is the reason (at least in part) for 9/11 and other Muslim atrocities

But what can you expect from someone who regurgitates Edward Said?

At least we have this to show for it. (Who knew that Captayne John Smith -- yes, Pocahontas' John Smith -- fought against jihad?)

Captayne John Smith, defender of the West against Muhammad's hordes.
Because, unlike Disney's fictionalized American Indians,
Muslims don't paint with all the colors of the wind.

Offered in defense of my comments on The Cultural Roots of American Islamicism:

Joseph,

According to the BOOK DESCRIPTION, Marr argues that "Historical, literary, and imagined encounters with Muslim history and practices provided a backdrop where different Americans oriented the direction of their national project, the morality of the social institutions, and the contours of their romantic imaginations. This history sits as an important background to help understand present conflicts between the Muslim world and the United States," as if we are somehow to blame.

Among the EDITORIAL REVIEWS, we find:

-Melani McAlister saying that our "global cultural imaginings" help explain the conflict between Islam and America.

-Iftikhar Malik claiming that "American mis-images of Islam" and their "reverberations even today" help explain the conflict between Islam and America.

-Anouar Majid asserting that "America's conflicted view of Islam" helps explain the conflict between Islam and America.

And MARR HIMSELF acknowledges that teaching for three years in Pakistan "opened my eyes to Islamic cultures and to the kindness of Muslims . . . That extended time . . . helped me begin to understand cultural distortions in the ways that Islam is represented and interpreted in American situations . . . It is my hope that this book will contribute to a fuller analysis of the impasses between Americans and global Muslims . . . I have been sustained . . . by the vision of Bahá'u'lláh [apparently Marr doesn't realize that the Bahá'í are persecuted by devout Muslims] that the earth is one common homeland consisting of a single human family sharing a diverse world culture."

The fundamental impasse between America and Islam is the difference between Heaven and hell. It's the difference between God-given, inalienable rights on the one hand and "kill the pagans wherever you find them" on the other.

Do you understand now that our present conflict with Islam has nothing to do with OUR perception of the "Muslim world"? That's like claiming that OUR "misunderstanding" of Imperial Japan helps explain the "conflict" in the Pacific. Or that the Holocaust was due to the Jews of Europe "misunderstanding" Hitler.

Stop blaming the victim, Joseph.

Islam is, and has always been, a totalitarian, brutal, genocidal "faith" because that is what Muhammad preached and practiced. Neither our perception nor the perceptions of the other non-Muslim civilizations attacked by Islam over the last one and one-half millennia have ANYTHING to do with why they hate us. Rather, it is Muslims' perception of the genocidal pedophile Muhammad as the apostle of a god that is the root cause of the global jihad.

To demonstrate that I offered John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, Ibn Kathir, and Muhammad in their own words. But you call that "ignorant."

So, if you like books that get fundamental historical fact completely upside-down, blame victims for the atrocities committed against them, and aid our enemies during a time of war, then please, buy this book.