Age of Coexistence – Ecumenical Frame and the Making of the Modern Arab World

“Makdisi brings to life the extraordinary men and women who fought on multiple fronts to create a modern antisectarian tradition in the Arab world. This work of scholarship and passion is urgent, necessary, and extremely welcome today, as the world struggles to fashion itself anew.”—Ahdaf Soueif, author of The Map of Love and Cairo: Memoir of a City Transformed “ Age of Coexistence dethrones the orthodox narrative of eternal antagonism and unchanging identity in the Middle East. This is scholarship at its best, thoroughly documented, well written, and provocative.”—Charles Glass, author of Tribes with Flags, The Tribes Triumphant, and Syria Burning and former ABC News chief Middle East correspondent “In a time of sanguinary violence, ratcheted up globally, a sensitive and thoughtful reflection on the history of coexistence is needed more than ever. This incisive and absorbing book, written by a preeminent historian of sectarianism in the Middle East, asks important and urgent questions about the ambiguities, consequences, and astonishing contemporary relevance of the concept of coexistence. By adopting an ecumenical frame, and putting the story of coexistence and conflict in conversation with histories of imperialist depredation then and now, Ussama Makdisi greatly illuminates the possibilities, promises, and difficulties of ‘a new kind of political intimacy and meaningful solidarity’ between people of different sects and religions living together.”—Laleh Khalili, author of Time in the Shadows: Confinement in Counterinsurgencies “This is an urgent, important, and eloquent book. It shatters persistent misconceptions about sectarianism and coexistence in the Arab world, from Egypt to Iraq, that are rooted in classical Orientalism and in misguided Western intervention in…