Provost Professor Emeritus Winnifred Fallers Sullivan, wrote a review of Faisal Devji’s Waning Crescent: The Rise and Fall of Global Islam. Sullivan writes that: Devji’s new book offers a complex and illuminating historical account of the many reasons why Islam as a global subject emerged, and why Devji believes that it is declining. One reads with a kind of fascinated wonder, even horror, at how this occurred—both its emergence and its waning—and of the many different people who contributed, sometimes unwittingly. One theme concerns the partnership that emerged between the West and global Islam in the 19th century, beginning perhaps with Napoleon, then in World War I, and up and through President Reagan’s efforts to foster jihad in Afghanistan.... Waning Crescent concludes with reflections on emerging political movements in Muslim-majority countries around the world, none of which have been waged in the name of Islam.
The College of Arts