Identity and Religion in Palestine:
The Struggle between Islamism and Secularism in the Occupied Territories
Loren D. Lybarger

Book Description | Table of Contents
Chapter 1 [in PDF format]

ADDITIONAL ENDORSEMENTS:

"Lybarger explores the processes by which individuals change and adopt identities as they live through sharply disturbing events. He asks how people have responded to the actions of Fatah, Hamas, and other organizations seeking to position themselves against Israel, and then proceeds by tracing the life courses of a number of individuals through these events and through their choices among possible affiliations. The strength of the book comes from the author's long acquaintance with these individuals and emerges in the detail about their lives and their expressions of their own religious and political choices and consequences. I found these narratives compelling."--John R. Bowen, author of Why the French Don't Like Headscarves

"The author argues that Palestinian political identity in the West Bank and Gaza has changed substantially over the past decades, and perhaps particularly over the seventeen- to eighteen-year span that demarcates his on-the-ground experience. His comparative advantage is that he has had impressive field experience. The result is a powerful and persuasive account of identity formation in the West Bank. This book will prompt and inform debate and contributes significantly to our understanding of politics in Palestine. No other available works come close to Lybarger in terms of unpacking and analyzing the components of Palestinian identity. The guts of the book are the rich biographical chapters. There is nothing like this available in English to my knowledge."--Augustus Richard Norton, Boston University

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File created: 11/5/2009

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