The West and the Rest: Globalization and the Terrorist Threat

In The West and the Rest, Scruton argues that to comprehend Islamist terrorism, one must understand what is unique - and what is potentially dangerous - about Western institutions, ideas, and technology.
Scruton shows how the different religious and philosophical roots of Western and Islamic societies have resulted in those societies' profoundly divergent beliefs about the nature of political order. For one thing, the idea of the social contract, crucial to the self-conception of Western nations, is entirely absent in Islamic societies. Similarly, Scruton explains why the notions of territorial jurisdiction, citizenship, and the independent legitimacy of secular authority and law are both specifically Western and fundamentally antipathetic to Islamic thought.