Peter Oborne. The Fate of Abraham: Why the West Is Wrong about Islam

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.13169/reorient.7.2.0229
• Pages: 229-232
• Published date: 14 December 2022
• Date: 14 December 2022
• Author: S. Sayyid

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Peter Oborne. The Fate of Abraham: Why the West Is Wrong about

Islam, London: Simon & Schuster. 2022. Hardcover (£25). 528

pp. 978-1398501027

By S. Sayyid, University of Leeds

For almost half a century, academics, journalists, and think-tank intellectuals have

all contributed to an extensive commentary on “Islam” and the “West”. What

makes Peter Oborne’s The Fate of Abraham different and unexpected is that it

stands in opposition to much of this commentary. There are three aspects to the

unexpected nature of this book.

First, and most obviously, it is unexpected because it rejects the conventional

wisdom’s obsession with what went wrong with Islam. Secondly, the book is

unexpected because it was written by a self-confessed British conservative and

shows how far Conservativism has travelled from being the habit of mind and

belief in tried-and-tested to a creed dedicated to a permanent revolution. Thirdly,

it is unexpected because it is a journalist writing against the grain of media insti-

tutionalisation of Islamophobia and Murdoch-isation of print and public service

broadcasting.

The book is divided into five parts, but conceptually it is organised into two

broad sections, historical and journalistic, which combine to show “why the West

is wrong about Islam”. The first section of the book maps out the relationship

between Islam and one of the three major powers associated with the West (United

States, Britain, and France). In each of these studies, Oborne does not begin in the

seventh century but rather focuses on the occasions when “Islam” becomes prom-

inent in political societies of the West. This includes, for example, the introduction

of coffee to seventeenth-century London; Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in the late

eighteenth century; the battles that the early American Republic fought against the

Barbary Pirates in the nineteenth century.

By framing the interactions between Muslimistan and Christendom through the

lenses of these three different political societies and their histories, Oborne is able

to reject the notion of an essential conflict between the “West” and “Islam”. He

does not succumb to rosy, romantic liberalism in which there are no differences or

antagonisms. Instead, what we see is a complex series of adjustments, disputes,

and compromises reflecting the political theological challenge of Islam for

Christianity. As Oborne puts it, Islam is both an existential threat to Christianity

and an affirmation of Christian biblical prophecy (p. 46). There is no continuous

chain of enmity or amity between Islam and the West.

The second section of the book comes in two parts (“The Enemy Within” and

“the Fate of Abraham”). This section can be read as a connected history of the war

DOI:10.13169/reorient.7.2.0229