About the Author

Caryle Murphy, winner of the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting, has been a Washington Post reporter for more than twenty years, serving twice as an overseas correspondent: first in South Africa and then in the Middle East. She covered Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, spending a month in the occupied emirate, and reported from Saudi Arabia during the 1991 Gulf War. She currently covers religion for the Post and lives in Washington, D.C.

Reviews

Judy WoodruffCNNCaryle Murphy takes us by the hand and introduces us to the people who are helping determine the future course of Islam. With her own passion for reporting and storytelling, she pulls us inside a world strange and forbidding to many Americans, but nevertheless vital for us to understand. She shows brilliantly how we have as much reason to hope for enlightenment and peace from the many corners of Islam as we do to fear more September 11ths.

Lee H. Hamiltondirector, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and former chairman, House Committee on International RelationsDrawing on her vast experience living and reporting in Egypt, Caryle Murphy provides a sweeping account of Islam's powerful and complicated role in the Middle East. "Passion for Islam" illuminates the forces that have led to religious terrorism, and in doing so offers a vision for how these forces could be harnessed for peace and progress.

Leslie H. Gelbpresident, Council on Foreign RelationsIn fine journalistic brushstrokes, Caryle Murphy lets you see how the Islamists would like to see themselves -- in all their subtle varieties and degrees of piety and lethality. While I assign more to the Islamists than the author for creating their own ills and ours, Murphy brings us much closer to Muslim minds, otherwise often caricatured in the West.

Raghida Derghamcolumnist for "Al-Hayat"Rarely does a book on religion and politics combine such journalistic excellence, impeccable research, and compelling stories. Each paragraph is a frame of history told meticulously with courage, fairness, and innovation.

Richard W. Murphysenior fellow, Middle East Council on Foreign RelationsThis is a timely, solid, and highly readable account by Caryle Murphy of conflicts within Islamic intellectual and religious circles as their leaders seek to relate their faith to today's changing political and economic conditions. Their attempts to create a modern Islamic society have led to tensions with the Egyptian government. In relating Egyptian developments to those in the broader Arab world, she persuasively demolishes the conventional wisdom that Egypt is unique and that Islam is monolithic. This book provides altogether a valuable set of insights for readers interested in getting beyond the stereotypical descriptions of Islamic thought advanced by both friends and critics of Islam in recent years.