Book Review: The Arab Awakening: Islam and the New Middle East, Tariq Ramadan, 2012, London: Allen Lane, pages: 273.

This book discusses the current situations in the Middle East and how the changes affected the people and the future of the Muslim world. Ramadan stated that the book does not claim “. . . to reveal secrets, to unveil what may be strategic goals, and even less to predict the future” for to do so would mean madness, which he regards as a combination of presumption and vanity (p: ix). What he attempts to do is to reexamine the facts, study the realities and to suggest some lessons, or to use Ibn Khaldun’s terminology – cibra – not only for the Arab world and the Muslim majority countries but also for keen observers of the phenomenal developments. Ramadan poses three important questions in analyzing the issues at hand: 1, what really happened in Tunisia and Egypt? 2, what is happening in the broader region that makes up the Middle East and North Africa (MENA)? And finally, why now? He stresses that to answer the questions, we must study the recent history and its actors, as well as political, geopolitical and economic contexts of the region.