"Understanding political Islam retraces the human and intellectual development that has led François Burgat to one very firm conviction: that the roots of the tensions that afflict the Western world's relationship with the Muslim world are political rather than ideological. In his compelling account of interactions between personal life-history and professional and research trajectories, Burgat examines how the rise of political Islam has been expressed: first in the Arab world, and secondly in its interactions with French and Western societies ..." -- Page 4 vof cover.