Just finished reading Who Speaks for Islam: What a Billion Muslims Really Think by John L. Esposito & Dalia Mogahed.

The book is based on Gallup's World Poll, and evaluates the attitudes and opinions of Muslims toward the West, and the West's attitudes and opinions toward Islam.

Very, very good read and there are some shockers (to me, at least) in there.

First, they pretty much destroy the correlation between religious fundamentalism and extremist violence that is so chic in the west. Basically, in the Islamic world, violent extremists aren't particularly demonstrably religious.

Second, they pretty much prove that the great majority of the Islamic world admires American freedom and technology. Which appears to weaken the position that "Islamic extremists attack us for our freedom and success" (shockingly, to me, the majority of self-described supporters of terrorism admire American freedoms and success; it's the perceived unfairness of action that they detest).

Third, they question effectively the presumption that Muslim women want western-styled women's liberation (they use the terms "libertine" versus "liberation" to make their point.)

I cannot remember reading a book so hungrily as the way I read this. I was prepared to tolerate this book, but ended up eager to get to the next point. I recommend reading this book, and welcome others' views on it. I picked out only two definite "weasel-passages" in it, where the authors very craftily side-stepped an issue that wasn't addressed in their research, but for a book that tries to achieve as much as this did, that's not bad....