Allies for Armageddon: The Rise of Christian Zionism by Victoria ClarkReview by: L. Carl BrownForeign Affairs, Vol. 87, No. 1 (Jan. - Feb., 2008), pp. 192-193Published by: Council on Foreign RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20020314 .

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Recent Books

had set as the Palestinian portion of the proposed two states. Militant religio nationalist Jewish settlers quickly moved onto what to them was the sacred land that God had commanded them to take.

They have become "lords of the land" and a force significantly disproportionate to their numbers in Israeli politics. Such is the organizing theme of this hard hitting study. Zertal and Eldar provide a chilling account of the settlers' mes sianic mindset, inspired as it was by the preaching of the rabbis Kook, father and son. They demonstrate the decisive tilt over the years of the Israeli military and the courts in favoring the settlers over the Palestinians. They show as well, adding to the complexity of this story, that many settlers are not religious zealots and that most Israelis are ambivalent toward the settlers and the settlements. Still, "facts on the ground" have been created since 1967, changing the nature of the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Lords of the Land provides a passionate and informed history of that change.

Algeria:Anger ofthe Dispossessed BY MARTIN EVANS AND JOHN

PHILLIPS. Yale University Press, 2007, 352 pp. $35.00.

Algeria, seen in the years immediately following 1962 as "the darling of the non aligned movement," was soon revealed to be an authoritarian state dominated by the military and unable to institution alize support from the people. The 198os

witnessed the rise of a radical Islamist movement that was on the threshold of achieving electoral victory in 1991 when the military intervened. This set in

motion violent years of civil war, with atrocities committed by both the state

and those Islamists who had taken up arms, even as political forces and the people looked on with horror and with distrust of both sides. Finally, during the administration of Algeria's presi dent since 1999, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, the militant Islamists seem to have been defeated and some measure of reconcil iation achieved. Evans and Phillips enrich this story with their appreciation of the ironies of Algeria's history and a healthy distrust of all established author ities, domestic and foreign. (There is a harsh critique of U.S. intervention in support of Bouteflika's government since 9/u.) The early pages of this collaborative effort by a historian and a journalist offer perhaps the best available brief overview of Algeria's history and its 132 years of French rule.

AlliesforArmageddon: The Rise of Christian Zionism. BY VICTORIA CLARK. Yale

University Press, 2007, 344 pp. $28.00. AlliesforArmageddon traces the history of Christian Zionism from its sixteenth century Calvinist roots to today's American Christians, led by the likes of the late Jerry Falwell and John Hagee, who fit a fervent this-worldly support for Israel into their millenarian beliefs. Clark has done much more than examine the copious literature, past and present, asserting the central role of Israel in end-time prophecies. She became a sharply critical participant-observer, interviewing Christian Zionist leaders, mixing with the rank and file, attending church services, and even joining a Holy Land tour. The resulting book is an intimate portrait of

what can fairly be called a cult, tightly organized and embracing a Manichaean doctrine that, being accepted as God

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Recent Books

given, is impervious to worldly reason ing. Clark also brings out in fill detail the theologically dubious alliance between the Israeli leadership and Christian Zionism, which depicts Israelis doing the heavy lifting in provoking Armageddon but not ultimately saved unless they convert to Christianity. She persuasively argues that Christian Zionism, embrac ing wars and rumors of wars as divinely

mandated, has a significant and unfavor able impact on U.S. foreign policy toward Israel and the Middle East in general.

The Many Faces ofPoliticallslam: Religion and Politics in the Muslim World BY

MOHAMMED AYOOB. University of

Michigan Press, 2007, 232 pp. $65.00 (paper, $22.95).

How refreshing it is to have a book on this subject that gets around to discussing al Qaeda only in the last pages of the penultimate chapter. In the early pages of this accessible short study, Ayoob lays to rest the "myth of the Islamic

monolith" and restores Islam and politics to history-which means, as with other

world religions, a complexity of conti nuity and change. He then presents Islam's "many faces" today in separate short chapters, neatly comparing and contrasting binary examples-Saudi Arabia and Iran ("self-proclaimed Islamic states"), Pakistan and Egypt (states caught "between ideology and pragmatism"), Turkey and Indonesia (Muslim democracies), and Hezbollah and Hamas (Islamist national resis tance movements). Only thereafter does he take on "transnational Islam," but even here he gives almost as much space to the Islamist movements Tablighi Jamaat and Hizb ut-Tahrir as to

al Qaeda. The concluding chapter offers a succinct, and severe, appraisal of the U.S. role in the ongoing history of these several national and transnational Islamist movements.

Koran, Kalashnikov, andLaptop: The Neo-Taliban Insurgency in Afghanistan, 20021. BY ANTONIO GIUSTOZZI.

Columbia University Press, 2007, 224 pp. $24.95.

The Taliban were routed but not de feated in the dying days of 2001. This detailed study, with a glossary, maps, graphs, and tables, chronicles the rise of what Giustozzi labels "the neo-Taliban." Separate chapters treat how and why the neo-Taliban were recruited, their organization, their tactics and strategy, and the counterinsurgency efforts of the

Afghan government and its outside sup porters. With copious cross-referencing, he works in such subjects as the contin ued involvement of Pakistan, the drug trade, neo-Taliban relations with al Qaeda, and the rural-versus-urban dimension of this struggle. There are also several perceptive comparisons with insurgencies elsewhere in the world.

Giustozzi's announced main argument is that the neo-Taliban would have

been no more than a nuisance but for their ability to exploit the weakness of the Afghan state, "both as it was origi nally conceived and as it was 'rebuilt' from 2001." He concludes that reining in the neo-Taliban by arms or diplo

macy will be more difficult now than reining in the original was five years ago. He also sees the group's strategy as having shifted in its new form from national resistance to global jihad.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS .January/February 2008 [193]

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