There was much wrong with placing the Emerson alongside the Kepel as you did and arguing that Emerson refutes Kepel
John, you read, write, and interpret with too broad a brush. If you go back to my Emerson post, you will see that I offered his views only for the proposition that Kepel's factual research concerning the decline of Islamism was faulty. Laqueur criticized Kepel on this point, too. Kepel simply did not dig hard enough. Partially as a result of his failure to look into then-current Islamist thought, his conclusion that Islamism was on the wane was wrong. Laqueur also suggests that Kepel did not understand the cultural backdrop, but I'm not qualified to comment on that point.
From all accounts, Kepel did a fine job in setting forth Islamism's history. I have no argument with him on that point. However, his notion that Islamism is on the wane is dangerous and misguided.
Emerson did a fine job of digging through facts and using them to predict future events. His conclusions were accurate while Kepel's were not. That Emerson is not a serious scholar, in my view, damns Kepel even more. If a layman could have figured out the problem, why couldn't a serious scholar with pretensions of covering the entire Islamist waterfront do the same?
The process of radicalization for Muslim immigrants to First World countries has been described elsewhere. I wonder if Kepel discusses that process which, in view of increasing Muslim immigration to the West, seems like a fairly simple way to refute the claim that Islamism is on the wane. You've read the book, perhaps you can comment.
The point of the discussion and including Emerson in it is that it is dangerous to accept ideas such as Kepel's, particularly since they appear to be based on insufficient factual research.
Why is it "wrong" to include Emerson? Trying to "censor" me, are you? VBG |
