Translation Rights TQE / Iraq. A Failure of the Western World (1920-2003)

After the First World War, Europe reorganized the geopolitical map of the Middle East according to the mandates established by the Society of Nations.  The term al-‘Iraq, used by the Arabic people ever since the VIII Century to refer to the area of Mesopotamia, was recuperated in 1920 and became the name of a new state which the British created from territories peopled by three very different Arabic communities:  the Shiites, the Sunnites, and the Kurds. 

The history of Iraq, dominated by internal and external wars and by the exclusion of Shiites and Kurds, has culminated with the illegal invasion of the country by a coalition led by the United States in 2003, the clearest example of the Western world’s failure in the area.  A clear explanation of this nation’s past, and a brilliant analysis of the regional and international setting of present-day Iraq, make this book by Gema Martín Muñoz a necessary reference in order to understand the present situation of this country and of the entire Middle East.

Gema Martín Muñoz was born in Madrid in 1955.  She has a doctorate in Arabic and Islamic Studies and is a professor in Sociology of the Arabic and Islamic world in the Autónoma University of Madrid.  She frequently gives lectures on this topic, and has been a visiting professor at the universities of Harvard, Roma Tre, Georgetown, Teherán, Mexico, Havana, El Quds (Palestine), Cairo, and Algiers.  Among her most recent publications are Islam, Modernism and the West (1999), El estado árabe. Crisis de legitimidad y contestación islamista (The Arabic State. Crisis of Islamic Legitimacy and Reply) 2000, and Percepciones sociales y culturales entre España y Marruecos (Social and Cultural Perceptions Between Spain and Morocco) 2001.  She is a regular collaborator in press, such as the newspaper El País and the magazine Claves de razón práctica.