Rating: 
Summary: Extreme Garbage
Review: This is a terrible book, because it is written in absolutely no context whatsoever. It is basically the worst, most hateful things that Muslims have written compiled into a book and presented to the West as Islam. Judging from his introduction, it is clear that the editor (Parfrey) has a vendetta against Islam and he is trying to scare the West about Islam. An analogy would be if somebody gathers up all the hateful Neo-Nazi and anti-Semitic literature in America and presents it to the East as "America". The author fails to mention that the views espoused in Extreme Islam are supported by a very small percentage of Muslims and there is a great movement in many Middle Eastern countries (especially Iran) against "fundamentalism". Secondly, Parfery takes absolutely legitimate writings about the Palestinian resistance and tries to present them as "extreme", thus trying to lump in the hateful writings of Khomeini with the moderate Arabs who want peace in Palestine. Disgusting.
Rating: 
Summary: Extreme subject, extreme editor
Review: This is a valuable source work. One caveat: To avoid the reading becoming an adventure in hate literature, the reader needs to keep the title in mind - this is a selection of the extreme, thus extremely unrepresentative of mainstream Islam.
For instance, the book opens with a selection on executing apostates (Muslims who leave Islam) and the sexual bliss awaiting martyrs in the afterlife. Perhaps 1 in 1,000 Muslims literally believe such things. One value of the book is that the issues that anger the authors of this anthology are also of concern to moderates throughout the world, and not only in Islamic countries. Western readers may be surprised to learn of the vehemence of this resentment. An indication of the editor's own political stance is his piece on the 1929 anti-Jewish riots in Hebron / Al-Khalil. He states that Arab rioters murdered 129 Jews. Human Rights Watch counts 67 deaths, and notes that other "Other Palestinian Arabs sheltered their Jewish neighbours; today the Zionist Archives preserve a list of 435 Jews who found a safe haven in homes in Hebron during the carnage" - a fact the author blandly ignores. This leads one to ask if the author's motive is to promote understanding, or to incite blind hatred? He certainly does not mention that what instigated the 1929 uprising was fear of what eventually did happen: further Jewish immigration, occupation and expulsion of the indigenous population. The author's own contribution reveals his book for what it is, part of a concerted campaign to demonize the dispossessed.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting But Uneven
Review: Well it appears Ima be the only one to buck the love-it-or-hate-it trend this book is inspiring... The title is a bit misleading; while Extreme Islam does contain lots of interesting background and perspectives across the radical islamist spectrum, probably half of it has nothing to do with any kind of "extreme" position, but rather sets the stage for understanding (hopefully) the more radical positions. Which is fine, it's just that "to the extreme!" marketing is dicey territory. Yes, it's far from complete as a religious political history, but Parfrey seems to have intended it more as a primer in radical islamist propaganda, not a scholarly work per se. I think the omissions of material relating to american machinations in the region are just because he's giving the reading audience a little credit. Despite the absence of a flashlight shining on american involvement, I really don't smell an axe to grind. The section focusing on (non-religious) palestinian hijacker Leila Khaled was the most enlightening, and that says something: people start making a little sense when you leave "god" out of it.
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