Found this review of my book online:

This fairly short but tightly written book came out on October 7. The author, Danny Burmawi, grew up in Jordan near a “Palestinian” refugee camp, and was a practicing—and by his own statements, strict—Muslim for 20 years before he converted to Christianity. Afterwards, he lived with his family in Lebanon for a decade and a half until life became too dangerous there and he moved to the United States.

Unlike the cri de cœur one reads in some other books by ex-Muslims, such as Musab Hassan Youssef (also known as “The Green Prince” or “The Son of Hamas”), Burmawi’s book is quite analytical— cool and rational in its presentation—but do not mistake this stance for moderation. In fact, he goes as far as to say that to him Islam is not an Abrahamic religion at all; that the elements from Judaism and Christianity in the Qur’an are funhouse mirror representations. Also, that while Judaism and Christianity are covenantal, Islam is only about unconditional submission to the will of Allah as revealed for all time in the Quran.

Without saying so explicitly, he essentially argues the point of somebody like Robert Spencer: that Islam is a supremacist political ideology camouflaged in the mantle of a religion.

While Burmawi does go, at some length even, into Islamic judeophobia and hatred for Israel, he places it in a broader context—namely, that the Islamic Ummah cannot abide any polity within its own realm that is ruled by non-Muslims. He points specifically to Lebanon as a case study, as well as to the exodus of Christians from countries where they have lived for many generations. The first two waves of Jewish returnees to the Land of Israel were tolerated, since they were dhimmi (second-class half-citizens) like all other non-Muslims in the Ottoman Empire, which claimed to be a Caliphate. (Mustafa Kemal, better known in the west by the honorific Atatürk — father of the Turks — abolished the Caliphate in 1924.) Once the Ottoman Empire collapsed and the British put an end to dhimmitude, the violence began.

Professing to be in the center of the political spectrum, Burmawi attacks both the hard left for trying to make common cause with Islam, and the right for making what he considers a false distinction between Islam as a purportedly peaceful religion and “Islamism” as a militant political ideology. To Burmawi — like to Turkish strongman Erdoğan—there is no such thing as moderate and radical Islam. There is Islam, and that is that. There are just strict Muslims and not-so-strict Muslims.

He also delves into the history of the leftist–Islamist alliance and actually traces it back to the 1920s in Soviet Russia, where both Christianity (Russian Orthodox, mostly) and Judaism were persecuted by the atheization campaigns of the Communist Party. But Islam, as a religion of the Central Asian Soviet republics, was not just given a pass, but in fact instrumentalized for the purpose of spreading Communist ideology. From that perspective, the KGB maneuvers to support Islamist and so-called “Palestinian liberation” movements in the Middle East were the next logical step.

Burmawi also cautions Western leftists with the example of the Iranian Revolution, which saw a similar leftist–Islamist alliance—but once the leftists had outlived their purpose to the Islamists, they were not merely discarded like used tissue, but in many cases were the first against the wall. (These are my words, not his; I am paraphrasing many of his arguments.)

Paradoxically, he says semi-Islamic strongman regimes in the Arab world are currently the only ones that can somewhat effectively tackle radical Islam. Small, rich states like Dubai function despite Islam, not because of it — the rulers are willing to set aside Islam whenever it interferes with the functioning of their polities, where in any case 90% of the population are noncitizens. (In passing, he directs some snark at some useful idiots on the Right like Sucker Qatarlson and Candace of the Sedevacant Brain.)

While Burmawi refers several times to the need for Islam to be reformed, he stops just barely short of saying that this is impossible, and that Islam is irremediable. He also says very explicitly that Islam as a politico-theological system is incompatible to the core with Western civilization. He paints the end goal of Islam as a worldwide borderless Ummah ruled as a theocracy. Western governments, he says, and Western societies more broadly, have lost faith in themselves and are unable to stand up against the way in which Islam weaponizes the West’s freedom of speech and freedom of religious expression laws against the West.

By the way, he strongly takes issue with the claim that jihad not only refers to holy war but also to a moral struggle within oneself. As he puts it, this is based on a single so-called “weak Hadith”, meaning one that does not have a solid chain of transmission, and which doesn’t appear within any of the six most authoritative compilations of Hadith.

The book was developed out of a series of long-form posts on X in which the author developed his argument. It is very concise, written very clearly, very analytical. Only in one spot, where he sings the praise of his spouse, does he wax emotional.

It is a riveting and at times unsettling read. Despite its high price, I warmly recommend reading the book for anyone who is trying to truly understand what is going on between the West and Islam (radical or “just Islam”). Even if you disagree with some or even many of the points, the book will make you think. I would love to see or her what Dr. Mordechai Kedar[*] would have to say about it.