Smug Waffle Written In An Ivory Tower - Rated 
Despite being barely a hundred pages long this book is interminable. The author's theories are ridiculously abstract and bear little relevance to real events.
Al Qaeda may use the modern media and thrive in a globalised world but its Wahabbi doctrine is unquestionably pre-medieval. The philosophy of Al Qaeda stems from Whabbist society which was cut off from the rest of the world until the 1930s. The oil boom of the 1970s allowed an essentially medieval society to spread its faith across the world and globalisation has ensured that two world cultures separated by hundreds of years of development have crashed together with bloody results.
John Gray seems to want to tell us everything he knows about The Enlightenment and the book reads like an academic textbook. Read The Looming Tower and make your own mind up about Al Qaeda and its place in the modern world.
Misleading title - Rated 
In this rather slim book John Gray, professor at the London School of Economics, tries to put the current domination of the United States into a historical, economical and philosophical perspective. He shows that the Western way of thinking has dominated the economic and technical developments over the last 2 centuries, but that it is only one of various alternative ways to establish a society. He also shows that purely secular movements like Marxism and Nazism are firmly rooted in the Christian way of thinking and looking at the world.
And he shows that extremely fundamental muslim movements like Al-Queda, who seem to oppose vehemently to the western, Christian way of thinking, are not as different as they seem to be. Both are based on the idea that a better world on earth is possible. The main objection of the non-Western world (and I believe by now also of a decent part of the Western world) is the messianic behaviour of the USA that wants to press its type of society as the Only Right One upon the rest of the world.
This is an interesting book: not easy, but smoothly written. My main concern is the misleading title: this book is much more about the United States than about Al-Queda, but probably books on Al-Queda sell better, so the title is rather misleading.
Modern horrors - Rated 
Is the title of this book misleading? Clearly the emphasis of the book is on 'what it means to be modern' and 'Al Qaeda' is only used sparingly (but in my opinion very tellingly) to illustrate the main thesis. Thats not to say the title wont shift more copies with Al Qaeda in there, but if you're an intelligent and open-minded reader then you should come away from this book having been presented with a novel perspective on the modern world and having learnt something new, or at least a new argument, about the underlying nature and rational of a truly modern and global terrorist movement. Gray spends a lot of time arguing that Islamism is a product of a way of thinking that did not exist pre-enlightenment, and it seems most reviewers are focusing on this part of the argument. But to me, the more interesting (and convincing) arguments here concern al qaeda's existance as a product not only of modern thinking but of globablisation ie their ability to exploit failed states, global communications such as the internet, and of the global movement of people, money and arms. Thus the meaning of al qaeda is placed within the framework of the world view presented in 'straw dogs', rather than technology and globablisation marching the world forwards into an era of democracy and peace, they will simply continue history along its usual course of conflict and suffering, only still more bloody.
Good perspective but not robustly argued - Rated 
A useful and thought provoking perspective on recent events. Lack depth and robustness to some of his arguments, especially his criticism of other points of view. Worth reading.
Toleration or salvation? - Rated
With al-Qaeda back to the Middle ages? Gray shows that Bin Ladin's "base" is profoundly modern, whatever their rhetoric about the crusades in the twelfth century and references to the Prophet's companions in the seventh.
From the French revolutionary cult of Positivism to the US pretensions of a Pax Americana, Gray paints a panorama of beliefs in progress and the perfectibility of human society, of which Islamic and Christian fundamentalism are as much part as Liberalism, Fascism, or Stalinism. This is not a new insight, but in our time of 'you are either with us or with the terrorists', it is worth reminding a wider readership
What next? Nobody really takes seriously what Fukuyama proclaimed fifteen years ago: The End of History, an uneventful hegemony of liberal capitalism. If anything, we have witnessed some events too many since the fall of the Berlin wall. Gray discusses "why we still do not know what it means to be modern", using a narrow concept of Darwinian evolution to explain the human mind. To be fair, Gray does stress that scientific theories can only ever be provisional, and he rejects the "secular hope ... of any final success", pleading instead for toleration, "peaceful coexistence of communities having different values and beliefs". How this squares with monotheistic salvation and Manichaean "us" and "them" is not easy to see.
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