In both academic and popular works on the Middle East, there has been a tendency to juxtapose the “rise” of Islamist political movements with a decline in support for secular political ideologies. While it can be useful to compare political and social trends against one another — many of the participants in Islamist movements clearly portray themselves as an alternative to secular nationalist parties — this comparison often has reduced the struggle for popular support in the Middle East to a zero-sum game. In effect, the narrative becomes an account of which trend has “prevailed” over the other. Usually, the reality on the ground is much more complicated. While Loren Lybarger's study investigates the competition between secular and Islamist ideologies in Palestine, its primary strength is that it does not reduce this competition to a zero-sum game. The reality in Palestine, one that is the locus of Lybarger's study, is that the Palestinian people have not completely abandoned one set of ideals and replaced them with another. Young people in the Occupied Territories, in the aggregate, are likely more religious than the previous generation, but many have crafted religious ideals that incorporate past nationalist ideals too.

Lybarger was fortunate to be “on the ground” in Palestine during the period of the first Intifada in 1987, when he was a volunteer teacher with the Mennonite Central Committee. He later returned to the region to conduct field work for his doctoral dissertation in 1999–2000. This second period coincided with the collapse of the Oslo peace process and the second Intifada. Lybarger's study charts the generational shifts in people's self-identities that have occurred within the Occupied Territories during these two periods with a special emphasis on how social mores changed between his first and second visits to the region. While Lybarger offers some background information concerning the histories of both secular-nationalist and Islamist parties in the Middle East, this is primarily a qualitative study that relies on in-depth interviews conducted in 1999–2000 with refugees in two Palestinian camps.

Generally, Lybarger's approach falls within an increasingly popular academic orientation that investigates changes in social identity that enable collective action and social movements. In effect, what are the resonant narratives, tropes, and affiliations that tie people together? How are these narratives used to motivate political action? More specifically, what symbols and narratives are resonant among younger Palestinians that may distinguish them from the previous generation? How are Palestinians who came of age between the first and second Intifada different than their parents? And just as important, how have people responded to the competition for power among Islamist and secular groups? Have secular groups become more religious? Has religion, for many, become more closely associated with the national ideal? In effect, how have the dominant ideologies associated with Islamist and secular parties changed the way Palestinians see themselves? And how do changes in individual self-identity get expressed in the popular politics of the region?

Lybarger is aware that there is not one answer to these questions. People inevitably have unique histories. Nevertheless, it is clearly useful to hear how Palestinians describe themselves, their religion, and their politics. Further, in answering the questions he poses, Lybarger is able to juxtapose general trends within the “secular-nationalist” and “Islamist” milieus of Palestine, describing both the continuities and points of departure among people who identify with different social groups. So while his study investigates why the younger generation increasingly is drawn to parties such as Palestinian Hamas and Islamic Jihad, it likewise investigates the continuity in the ideas that Islamists have used when they decided to compete for political power.

Overall, this book is a rarity in that it offers a closely observed account of the factors that have brought changes to Palestinian self-identity in the past two decades. While observers of Palestinian politics are aware that Islamist parties in Palestine are gaining popular support, Lybarger's study helps to complete what is often an overly broad accounting of this trend by offering specific examples of how some Palestinians have experienced these changes at a personal level.