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The Next Front: Southeast Asia and the Road to Global Peace with Islam (Wiley, October 2009, ISBN: 978-0-470-50390-4, S$42.95 / Cloth) by Senator Christopher S. Bond and Lewis M. Simons argues that Muslims in this part of the world are sliding toward radical Islam and offer a bold, new approach that would re-establish American credibility and help defuse global terrorism.
The Next Front takes us inside the little known societies of Southeast Asian Islam, and introduces the world's largest conglomeration of Muslims: a people vastly different from the Arabs we have come to know through news reports on the turmoil in the Middle East. Asian Muslims are hearing louder calls to turn from secular forms of government to rigid religion-controlled systems like those of Saudi Arabia and Iran, which, among others, are funding an onslaught of ultra-conservative religious schools and political organizations in the region. This book introduces an eye-opening cast of characters: from armed terrorists – active in jungles and cities, and who were trained by Osama bin Laden – to radical clerics and western-trained officials who plead for Americans to come to their countries to teach, to help start small businesses, and improve health care.
The Next Front specifically addresses Indonesia and several other nations in Southeast Asia, which is home to the world's greatest concentration of Muslims. Fundamentalist Islam is gaining traction in this region, backed by Saudi and Iranian money. Bond and Simons believe that only by substituting smart power (civilians in sandals) for force (soldiers in boots), can America stand its best and perhaps last chance to come to terms with radical Islam.
The Next Front offers a fresh, out of the box approach that America needs to adopt to rebuild its credibility, and to right its foreign policy failures.
"The Next Front is an eye-opener. Senator Kit Bond and Lew Simons reawaken us to Southeast Asia. Here's the way to mutual respect between America and Islam." —Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC's Hardball and NBC's The Chris Matthews Show
"The Next Front is important reading for anyone interested in America's relations with the world's Muslims. Bond and Simons demonstrate that a piece of the solution lies with the huge Islamic population of Southeast Asia, a vital region we have largely ignored since the end of the Vietnam War." —Sen. John McCain
About the Authors
Christopher S. "Kit" Bond was elected to the U.S. Senate from Missouri in 1986, the only Republican that year to win a seat previously held by a Democrat. He was re-elected in 1992, 1998, and 2004. In the Senate he has built a reputation as an advocate for a strong U.S. military, improved care for veterans and service men and women, as a reformer of the intelligence community, and as an expert on Southeast Asia. He is vice chairman of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee. He was the youngest governor, at 33, Missouri ever had. He graduated cum laude from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton.
Lewis M. Simons has been a journalist specializing in Asia since 1967, with the Associated Press, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Knight-Ridder. He won a Pulitzer Prize for international reporting for his coverage of the Marcos family in the Philippines. He is the author of Worth Dying For: A Pulitzer Prize Winner's Account of the Philippine Revolution. He contributes regularly to The National Geographic, and his op-ed articles have appeared in The New York Times and The Washington Post.
THE NEXT FRONT:
Southeast Asia and the Road to Global Peace with Islam
By Senator Christopher “Kit” Bond and Lewis M. Simons
Wiley
October 2009
ISBN: 978-0-470-50390-4
SGD$42.95 / Cloth.
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aboey[.]wiley.com 
