“The Sixth Crisis – Iran, Israel, America, And The Rumors of War” – Dana Allin, Steven Simon (Oxford University Press, 2011) “Beyond Islam: A New Understanding of the Middle East” – Sami Zubaida (I.B Tauris, 2011)

(Reviewed for International Affairs) With the eyes of the World transfixed on the ongoing Arab uprising the threat of a conflict between Iran and either or both of the US and Israel has moved somewhat into the shadows. The Sixth Crisis joins many books in being surprised by the current events, erroneously describing the Arab states as “more mature now than they were in the wake of decolonization and more secure than they were in the spring of 1967”. Nevertheless the authors, one a  senior Professor at John Hopkins University and the other a former member of President Clinton’s National Security Council staff, get it spot on when they argue that “Middle Eastern regimes have never feared invasion as much as subversion”. Such subversion is now out in the open and on the streets and in the squares of cities across the region, truly an unexpected seventh crisis is upon us.

Recent events aside Allin and Simon’s work is a remarkably ambitious foray across the history and the strategic hotspots of the region in what amounts to essentially well informed speculation on how and what kind of potential conflict could emerge as the ‘sixth crisis’. The book attempts to be both an explanation and a warning. America, the authors argue, has confronted five distinct crises in the Middle East since World War 2, each drawing the country progressively deeper into the region. Today America stands at the crossroads of another crisis with intelligent leadership the only hope for Washington to steer through such choppy waters. Both writers largely endorse Obama’s approach to the region which demonstrates what the authors refer to as ‘psychological realism’ that understands that America is unable to impose its own moral and historical narrative on the rest of the world. Where the book is at its most coherent is in an analysis of the simmering Iranian-American/Israeli conflict. The nuclearization of a ‘thuggish’ Iran is articulated as a ‘reckless and frightening escalation of the shadow conflicts and real wars in the Middle East’. The Iranian intent is judged as hostile and monitoring measures such as the NPT are dismissed as ineffective regulators of Iranian ambitions with Tehran described as ‘writing the book on how to achieve a near-nuclear weapons status within the broad parameters of the treaty’. So what can be done to stop them? While not very much is offered in the way of constructive solutions plenty is written about options doomed to fail. War against Iran would be a ‘tragic mistake’ and although the potential for Israeli airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities is very real, the authors dismiss its likely effectiveness with the best scenario being the programme ‘might be set back by a couple of years’. Meanwhile sanctions on Iran are casually dismissed as ‘of utterly unproven efficacy’. 

Where the book fails is in keeping to a tight narrative and not wandering off into rabbit holes of history and a shallow but expansive tour of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that contributes nothing new to a much covered debate. The authors are also guilty of inconsistencies in argument, for example in the introduction they state their intent to avoid a characterisation of the Middle East that sees reality as a war against ‘Islamo-fascism’ yet a few pages later they simplify the complex issue of Iranian funding to proxy groups as the funnelling of money to “Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists for the purpose of killing Israeli Jews”.

Zubaida’s book, by contrast, is almost entirely focused upon a single argument which is that to understand the Middle East through the prism of Islam, as it is viewed by academics such as Ernest Gellner, is to completely misunderstand it.  Zubaida, a Professor of Politics and Sociology at Birkbeck, is deeply critical of the superimposing of Islam on normal modern activity, what is sometimes referred to as ‘spray-on Islam’, ranging from issues as diverse as Muslim banking to the more sensitive area of sexuality and gender. At its core Zubaida has written a handbook by which to refute Western essentialism that describes ‘multiple modernities’ as basis of academic study of the region. Instead modernity is explained as not alternative but rather ideologically contested warning against ‘legitimizing the cultural standpoint of patriarchal and traditional advocates as somehow more authentic than that of the advocates of liberation and diversity’.

However one questions the extent to what Zubaida refers to as ‘Gellner’s model’ is such a pervasive framework for understanding the region in popular discouse, and perhaps the books major appeal should be to followers of Gellner seeking a robust challenge to his academic theories. If the reader is able to endure the constant sniping towards Gellner and the somewhat disjointed feel to the book that comes from it being a series of essays bolted together, then they will be rewarded with a rich tapestry of scholarship that moves effortlessly from political theory to a thorough history of the region.