Dining with Al-Qaeda: Three Decades Exploring the Many Worlds of the Middle East

Book Review (from 2010) Hugh Pope’s “Dining with Al-Qaeda: Three Decades Exploring the Many Worlds of the Middle East”

Reporting on the Middle East by Western media overemphasizes Islam as a framework and/or analytical tool to understand the region. It presents simplistic dichotomies: the good “moderates” and the bad “radicals.” This tendency leads to misleading coverage of conflict, according to Hugh Pope, a former reporter for the Wall Street Journal, in his 2010 memoir Dining with Al-Qaeda: Three Decades Exploring the … Continue reading →