Tukhachevskii, Thank you for your very learned comments. But I just had the thought that very deep learning (which is good, which is just great) is not the level at which everyday practical politics operates.
Its not clear to me (btw, I would guess there is a deeply learned discourse about this topic too, I just dont know much about it) if the profoundest thinkers really influence events or just understand them better and laugh bitterly every night as they go to bed. At the level at which decision makers take decisions, it does not seem to matter that the actual history of Islam (or anything else) is much more complex than this thin book can encompass. So the big question may not be what the book covers and what it leaves out, but whether the WRITER of the book knew much more, understood deeply and then CHOSE (wisely?) to simplify in this manner; for the sake of actually having an impact on everyday decisions? as carefully/subtly crafted stylized facts? or is he really rather shallow and what you see is what you get?
The wise and well informed reviewer (not I; I neither know that much nor have I even read the whole thing yet) will tell us that.
I hope you will. I hope I have conveyed my rather convoluted thought process sufficiently (I know I have not conveyed it very clearly).
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