Written in response to 9/11, this book seeks to unravel today's Islamic fundamentalism (IF) which finds in the Qur'an only a summons to war. Meddeb maintains that contemporary Islam is infected with a sickness -- fundamentalism -- that is cutting it off from the richness of its own tradition & history. He traces the genealogy of this malady & at the same time demonstrates the pluralist tradition at the heart of Islam. He argues that it is equally necessary to see how the West -- particularly the U.S. -- has exacerbated the perversionÓ of the culture, by failing to integrate Islam into the rest of the world & by exercising the hegemony in the Arab world with impunity. Only when both its internal & external causes are addressed will IF lose its sway.