The Perils and Promise of Islam: The United States and the Muslim Middle East in the Early Cold War*

Islam is poor, a sad fate for the only great religion founded by a successful businessman. Islam is divided and headless, a painful fate for a religion founded by a first-rate practical politician. Islam is militarily feeble, a disgrace to a religion that so eagerly took up the sword. Islam is intellectually stagnant, an ironic punishment for a religion which was founded upon an idea which for centuries carried the lamp of learning, and then, at the crisis of its history, deliberately turned its back upon reason as the enemy of faith. So wrote an unnamed author in the August 1951 issue of Time as the magazine brought to its readers’ attention the dominant American interpretation of Islam in the first decade after World War II. The short article provided an overview of Islamic history and included this brief introductory commentary about the difficulties the Muslim world faced in the post-World War II era. The author continued by noting that despite all of these shortcomings Islam somehow remained both strong and important, as the Muslim world might “be the area of decision in the struggle between the West and Communism.”1