Questions about "A World Without Islam"?

Posted By Blake Hounshell Tuesday, January 22, 2008 - 1:58 PM Share

If you haven't yet read "A World Without Islam," the cover story for our January/February 2008 issue, you really should. Graham Fuller, the former vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council at the CIA, has penned a sweeping, thought-provoking essay that has already turned a lot of heads in the United States and beyond. Fuller takes a hypothetical question—What if Islam had never existed?—and walks us through an alternate history of the world as if Mohammed had never founded the third major monotheistic religion in the seventh century.

It's an intriguing thought experiment. With no Muslim faith, would Christianity rule the globe? Would the Middle East today be democratic and free? And the big question, of course: Would the attacks of Sept. 11 never have happened? The answer, according to Fuller, is none of the above. Wipe Islam from the sands of time, he says, and we'd wind up largely in the same place we are today.

Fuller, now an adjunct professor of history at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, is chock full of knowledge and insights on Islam and the Middle East and is eager to hear reactions to his essay. Send us any questions you have for him by this Friday, Jan. 25, and we'll publish his answers here on Jan. 31.

EXPLORE:MIDDLE EAST, FOREIGN POLICY MAGAZINE, HISTORY, ISLAM

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