States that the route to any coherent understanding of our time runs through the issues addressed in this collection of essays: the political meaning of Islam, and the relation of the West to the Islamic world.

This work brings together the author's writings on these issues over the past decades. Its introductory essay, refelecting on the aftermath of the US invasion of iraq, integrates these analyses in a major new account of the strategy of the US imperialism in the Middle East and its prospects.