Jonathan VanAntwerpen is program director for theology at the Henry Luce Foundation. Originally trained as a philosopher, he received his doctorate in sociology from the University of California, Berkeley. He is co-editor of a series of books on secularism, religion, and public life, including Habermas and Religion (Polity, 2013), Rethinking Secularism (Oxford University Press, 2011), The Post-Secular in Question (NYU Press, 2012), The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere (Columbia University Press, 2011), and Varieties of Secularism in a Secular Age (Harvard University Press, 2010). VanAntwerpen was the founding director of the SSRC's program on religion and the public sphere, and in 2007 he worked with others to launch The Immanent Frame, serving for several years as editor-in-chief.
This is a wide-ranging and trenchant critique of the ideological thinking behind American imperialism in the Middle East. But beyond that, it makes the intriguing argument that the world has already entered a phase of revolutionary resistance transcending the old ‘Islam vs. the West’ cliché. Anyone interested in the current debates about the future of America’s global hegemony will profit from reading this original and passionately written book.