Which Muslims should Western governments engage with, and which should they shun? Since the bombings in New York and Washington on September nth 2001, and the later attacks in Madrid and London, few questions have been so urgent or have generated such fevered debate. Some experts and government officials-Lorenzo Vidino, in the first of these books, calls them the optimists-argue for dialogue with the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist movement born in Egypt in the 1920s which now has a worldwide network of followers and institutions. A countervailing school-the pessimists, to whom Mr Vidino is closer-suggests that the Brothers are wolves in sheep's clothing, sharing much of the militants' agenda but hiding behind a mask of doublespeak.
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