A Cambridge scholar from Lebanon, Riad Nourallah is Senior Lecturer at the Diplomatic Academy of London. His publications demonstrate his wide-ranging interests, from literature and cultural issues in the Middle East to diplomacy and peace building. All these interests converge in this compact and bold project, Beyond the Arab Disease.

As Ibrahim Abu-Rabiע has reminded us, “almost every Arab thinker, be he/she from the Left or Right, thinks that the older visions of rebuilding society have been exhausted and that there is a long-standing crisis in Arab society that awaits a solution” (Contemporary Arab Thought, 2004, p. 8). According to the latter's classification, Nourallah fits somewhere between the “liberal” (no critical theory here) and the “Arab nationalist.” Setting the tone for the rest of the book, Nourallah's first chapter analyzes the Arab malaise and then pleads with both Western and Arab states to listen to one another afresh, to work on resolving the conflicts borne out of colonialism and neocolonialism, and move toward reconciliation. Whereas the United States should take stock of its reckless behavior in the region, Arab countries as well, suffering from a prolonged illness, should seriously consider three pills that might well put them on the path of collective recovery: Arab unity, healthier relations with the world's superpower, and peace with Israel.

The sobering 2002 Arab Human Development report published by the U.N.'s development agency leads Nourallah to examine some possible reasons for the Arab world's “disease,” particularly in the educational, cultural, and economic spheres. This necessitates a revisiting of the 19th century “Arab Awakening,” the Arabs' revolt against the Turks, unfulfilled Western promises during the Great War, and also the idea of an Arab caliphate suggested by British diplomat and poet W. S. Blunt in his The Future of Islam (1882), which contributed in part to the ferment of Arab nationalists of the next century. As for the three “bitter pills” Nourallah offers as remedy, the emphasis here is on “bitter”: Arab unity may still be a long way off, U.S. hegemony of late has left much damage in its wake, and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict seems as unsolvable as ever.

Nevertheless, in the spirit of historian Richard Bulliett (The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization, 2004), Nourallah points out that on either side of civilizational divides there are more common interests and resources for diplomatic exchange than is usually recognized. Roosevelt was so impressed with Saudi King עAbd al-עAziz's speech at the 1933 Yalta conference that he wrote him (one week before his death), saying that “he would take no action detrimental to Arab interests in Palestine” (p. 13). Nourallah also quotes from Jewish religious and political figures who in different eras forged a universal humanist discourse in contrast to today's sometimes narrow and self-serving Zionist one (pp. 24–28).

The common thread in an otherwise disjointed project is Nourallah's passion for reconciliation and his personal assets in the role of Mideast peacemaker: his knowledge of diplomacy and his love of literature. Chapter 2 is replete with original observations on Islamic diplomacy, from the remarkable diplomatic skills deployed by the Prophet Muhammad to a lengthy list of values central to the Islamic tradition that promote understanding and dialogue with other states and civilizations. That the ideals were often flouted in practice is not an indictment of the revelation, urges Nourallah, but rather a spur for Muslims to embody them more energetically today. In addition, Umayyad Damascus borrowed freely from Byzantine diplomacy, as Abbasid Baghdad did from “a range of Western and Eastern traditions” (p. 50). Haroun al-Rashid arranged for an exchange of gifts and envoys with Frankish Emperor Charlemagne, and under Ottoman Caliph Selim III “a crop of brilliant ambassadors became articulate advocates and promoters of reform and rapprochement with Europe” (p. 53). Today, however, Muslim states have fallen behind in the professional training of their diplomats, who should not only “stand for” their respective countries but also at times “stand up” to their administrations when they judge policies ill-adapted to the cause of peace and understanding. He then offers twenty-four pages of bulleted suggestions as to how Arab states and their civil-society agents should develop a “culture of diplomacy as well as of conflict prevention and conflict resolution” (p. 57), an imaginative, substantial, and practical blueprint, in which religious and secular values coalesce to spin the contours of a truly polycentric and pluralistic world.

In addition to chapter 5 (on Sufism and its often positive impact on society), the rest of the work is devoted to the role of literature in bridging the Western–Islamic divide: an impressive introduction to modern Arabic literature; George Bernard Shaw, Islam, and the Mideast; literature and peacemaking. Here the reader is struck not just by the breadth of Nourallah's knowledge of world literature, but even more by his articulate advocacy of great literature and its capacity to “expurgate” violent emotions and actions and to uplift individuals and their communities, “underscoring throughout the preciousness and endurance of life even when it is most painful or frail” (p. 118).

Despite sentences sometimes unnecessarily long and dense, Nourallah eloquently puts across his vision for conflict resolution. Sadly, his book's price will prevent it from being read by a wide audience, as it deserves, of Muslims and non-Muslims, Arabs, and internationals.