Shaban, Fuad. For Zion's Sake: The Judeo-Christian Tradition in American Culture.

• Position: Arabic - Book Review

Shaban, Fuad. For Zion's Sake: The Judeo-Christian Tradition in American Culture (Arabic). Damascus, Syria: Dar al-Fikr, 2003. Hardcover, no price indicated.

This well researched, rigorous book traces the distortions of Christianity in the west since Columbus to show the relationship between fundamental Christianity and the colonial project. The author discusses the Zionizatiion of Christianity and its relationship to orientalism. This historic treatment lays the basis for comprehending the Judeo-Christian tradition in American culture.

The historiography and the meta-theoretical commitment that under-gird the treatment of the subject serve the author well. He is able to cast a critical look at the way in which Christianity became fundamental to the American colonial project. The development of an ideology based in religion was the sine qua non to carrying out the genocide against the indigenous peoples and the enslavement of the African. It is embedded in the establishment of republican institutions and formed the basis for establishing the mythology of America (the U.S.) as the "shining city on the hill." Even African Americans develop these images that rest on Christian-Zionist interpretations of the Holy Bible in their struggle for emancipation and later for civil rights.

This fundamentalist...