THE ORIGINAL FRENCH TITLE of this book promises unehistoire laïque of the Middle East. While the publishers of the English translation have opted for the more neutral-sounding “a political history” — laïcité having rather less cultural cachet in the Anglophone world than in France — Jean-Pierre Filiu, professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Sciences Po, still begins by declaring that he has adopted a “secular approach” to the subject.
The history of the Middle East, he seems to mean by this, ought not to be seen in terms of the ways in which Muslims, Christians, and Jews have interpreted and lived out the teachings of their respective faiths, but
