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From one of our most trusted counterterrorism experts, a sweeping, insider's account of the decade-long chase for America's deadliest enemy. This landmark history chronicles the dramatic, decade-long war against al Qa’ida and provides a model for understanding the ebb and flow of terrorist activity. Tracing intricately orchestrated terrorist plots and the elaborate, multiyear investigations to disrupt them, Seth G. Jones identifies three distinct “waves” of al Qa’ida violence. As Jonathan Mahler wrote in the New York Times Book Review, “studying these waves and the counterwaves that repelled them can tell us a lot about what works and what doesn’t when it comes to fighting terrorism.” The result is a sweeping, insider’s account of what the war has been and what it might become.
In 1105, six years after the first crusaders from Europe conquered Jerusalem, a Damascene Muslim jurisprudent named ’Ali ibn Tahir al-Sulami (d. 1106) publicly dictated an extended call to the military jihad (holy war) against the European invaders. Entitled Kitab al-Jihad (The Book of the Jihad), al-Sulami’s work both summoned his Muslim brethren to the jihad and instructed them in the manner in which it ought to be conducted, covering topics as diverse as who should fight and be fought, treatment of prisoners and plunder, and the need for participants to fight their own inner sinfulness before turning their efforts against the enemy. Al-Sulami’s text is vital for a complete understan...
The definitive biography, mesmerizing and “richly textured ” (Chicago Tribune), that inspired the acclaimed documentary, Letters from Baghdad. With a new Afterword "Desert Queen...plucks Gertrude Bell out of the shadow of Lawrence of Arabia." —The Boston Globe Here is the story of Gertrude Bell, who explored, mapped, and excavated the Arab world throughout the early twentieth century. Recruited by British intelligence during World War I, she played a crucial role in obtaining the loyalty of Arab leaders, and her connections and information provided the brains to match T. E. Lawrence's brawn. After the war, she played a major role in creating the modern Middle East and was, at the time, considered the most powerful woman in the British Empire. In this masterful biography, Janet Wallach shows us the woman behind these achievements—a woman whose passion and defiant independence were at odds with the confined and custom-bound England she left behind. Too long eclipsed by Lawrence, Gertrude Bell emerges at last in her own right as a vital player on the stage of modern history, and as a woman whose life was both a heartbreaking story and a grand adventure.
While the United States, and indeed most of the Western world, fights an active war against Islamic terrorism, we remain in deep denial about who truly is the enemy. Elites across North America and Europe fight to silence those who argue, compellingly, that the roots of terrorism are within Islam itself which has evolved into far more than a religion—it is a radical and dangerous political ideology which consciously, if often tacitly, places itself in opposition to democracy and basic human rights. Robert Spencer, one of the world’s foremost critical scholars of Islam, has been labeled Public Enemy #1 by those who apologize for Islam and its violent excesses. He has been called a propaga...
In 2012, research was conducted by the Denny JA Foundation for Indonesia Without Discrimination. The findings are as follows: there were 2,398 cases of violence and discrimination in Indonesia between 1998 and 2011, a period of 14 years. There are five types of fundamental conflicts that can be used to categorize instances of violence. As many as 65 percent of the conflicts were caused by religious/faith interpretation. The nature of the post-reform conflict is distinctive. Conflicts between communities were more primal or communal. The nature of this conflict differed from that of the New Order era, which was marked by discrimination and ideological feuding. The Denny JA Foundation identified the five worst discrimination cases from five regions.
Who are the Taliban? Are they a militant movement? Are they religious scholars? The fact that these and other questions are still raised with frequency is testimony to the way the movement has been studied, often at arm's length and with scant use of primary sources. The Taliban Reader forges a new path, bringing together an extensive range of largely unseen sources in a guide to the Afghan Islamist movement from a unique insider perspective. Ideal for students, journalists and scholars alike, this book is the result of an unprecedented, decade-long effort to encourage the emergence of participant-centered accounts of Afghan history. This ground-breaking collection, ranging from news articles and opinion pieces to online publications and poems transcribed by hand in the field, sets the stage for a recalibration of how we understand and study the Afghan Taliban. It challenges researchers to forge new norms in the documentation of conflict and provides insight into the future trajectory of political Islamism in South Asia and the Middle East.
This major new Handbook synthesises more than two decades of scholarly research, and provides a comprehensive overview of the field of terrorism studies. The content of the Handbook is based on the responses to a questionnaire by nearly 100 experts from more than 20 countries as well as the specific expertise and experience of the volume editor and the various contributors. Together, they guide the reader through the voluminous literature on terrorism, and propose a new consensus definition of terrorism, based on an extensive review of existing conceptualisations. The work also features a large collection of typologies and surveys a wide range of theories of terrorism. Additional chapters su...
Describes the history of the modern development of the Middle East, focusing on the British and American influences on Middle Eastern politics and culture.
Jihad is one of the most loaded and misunderstood terms in the news today. Contrary to popular understanding, the term does not mean "holy war." Nor does it simply refer to the inner spiritual struggle. This book, judiciously balanced, accessibly written, and highly relevant to today's events, unravels the tangled historical, intellectual, and political meanings of jihad. Looking closely at a range of sources from sacred Islamic texts to modern interpretations, Understanding Jihad opens a critically important perspective on the role of Islam in the contemporary world. As David Cook traces the practical and theoretical meanings of jihad, he cites from scriptural, legal, and newly translated t...