Jihad

Gilles Kepel is one of the world's foremost experts on the current Middle East and is director of research at the CNRS in Paris, and Professor at the Institute for Political Studies in Paris, France.

I read this in Pakistan, over a period of weeks shortly after the 9/11 attacks. Its sweep across the broad landscape of radical Sunni activism was a revelation. The book is one of the few genuinely rigorous academic overviews of the social and historical roots of the phenomenon of modern Muslim extremism ranging geographically from the far east to Europe, and chronologically from the 1960s onwards that also remains readable. Its primary thesis that violent Islamic militancy is in large part a response to the failure of political Islamist activism has stood the test of time. Kepel is famous in France but almost unknown outside. This is a shame. A classic.

• IntroductionPart I Expansion 1. A Cultural Revolution 2. Islam in the Late 1960s 3. Building Petro-Islam on the Ruins of Arab Nationalism 4. Islamism in Egypt, Malaysia, and Pakistan 5. Khomeini's Revolution and Its Legacy 6. Jihad in Afghanistan and Intifada in Palestine 7. Islamization in Algeria and the Sudan 8. The Fatwa and the Veil in Europe 185 Part II Decline 9. From the Gulf War to the Taliban Jihad 10. The Failure to Graft Jihad on Bosnia's Civil War 11. The Logic of Massacre in the Second Algerian War 12. The Threat of Terrorism in Egypt 13. Osama bin Laden and the War against the West 14. Hamas, Israel, Arafat, and Jordan 15. The Forced Secularization of Turkish Islamists Conclusion Notes Glossary Maps Abbreviations Index