Varieties of Muslim experience : encounters with Arab political and cultural life / Lawrence Rosen.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 243-265) and index.

Acknowledgments -- Introduction : presenting and re-presenting Islam -- Just and not just -- Junk democracy : Middle East meets Middle America -- What (if anything) went wrong? personalism, institutions, and the unfractionated self -- Why do Arab terrorists kill themselves? -- On the meaning of ownership : the problematic of property in Moroccan culture -- Islamic concepts of justice -- Readings and re-readings -- Reading the Quran through Western eyes -- Why portraits hold no meaning for Arabs -- Protecting the Prophet : understanding Muslim reactions to the Danish cartoon controversy -- Theorizing from within : Ibn Khaldun and the understanding of Arab political culture -- Representatives and representations -- Knowledge forms : scientists as fundamentalists -- Expecting the unexpected : cultural components of Arab governance -- Power and culture in the acceptance of "universal" human rights -- Afterword.

"In Varieties of Muslim Experience, anthropologist Lawrence Rosen explores aspects of Arab Muslim life that are, at first glance, perplexing to Westerners. He ranges over such diverse topics as why Arabs eschew portraiture, why a Muslim scientist might be attracted to fundamentalism, and why the Prophet must be protected from blasphemous cartoons. What connects these disparate features of Arab social, political, and cultural life? Rosen argues that the common thread is the importance Arabs place on the negotiation of interpersonal relationships - a link that helps to explain actions as seemingly unfathomable as suicide bombing and as elusive as Quranic interpretation. Rosen's book is crucial for anyone interested in better understanding the Arab world."--BOOK JACKET.