The Islam/west Debate

In February of 2002, sixty American intellectuals release an open letter, entitled "What We're Fighting For," that sought to define the so-called war on terror in terms of the defense of universal principles of human dignity and rights, religious freedom, and truth. The letter touched off an international debate in which diverse American, European, and Middle Eastern intellectuals, religious figures, politicians, newspaper editors, and others responded to the letter's arguments. In this volume, Blankenhorn (president, Institute for American Values, US), Filali (director, Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilizations, Aga Khan U., UK), Mneimneh (vice president, Iraq Memory Foundation), Roberts (research assistant, Institute for American Values) presents the original letter along with most of the major media, scholarly, and Islamist responses to it. Annotation c2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

David Blankenhorn is the president of the Institute for American Values. He is the author of Fatherless America: Confronting Our Most Urgent Social Problem (1995) and has co-edited seven other books. Abdou Filali-Ansary is director of the Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations, Aga Khan University in London. He co-founded the bilingual Arabic and French journal Prologues: revue maghrZbine du livre. Hassan I. Mneimneh is the vice president of the Iraq Memory Foundation and the director of its Documentation Project. In 2004, he was the executive director of the Iraq Foundation, a nonprofit organization promoting democratic change in Iraq. Alex Roberts is a research assistant at the Institute for American Values. In addition to Islam/West relations, his research areas include marriage in the African-American community and the well-being of children.