Book picks similar to
The Two Faces of Islam: The House of Sa'ud from Tradition to Terror by Stephen Schwartz
islam
non-fiction
religion
middle-east
American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us
Steven Emerson - 2002
Leading the second wave of post 9/11 terrorist books, American Jihad reveals that America is rampant with Islamic terrorist networks and sleeper cells and Emerson, the expert on them, explains just how close they are to each of us.
The Morning They Came for Us: Dispatches from Syria
Janine Di Giovanni - 2016
It would mark the beginning of a long relationship with the country, starting with her coverage of the peaceful uprising and continuing as the situation quickly turned into one of the most brutal, internecine conflicts in recent history. Drawn to the stories of the ordinary people caught up in the conflict, Syria came to consume her every moment, her every emotion.Speaking to those directly involved in the war, di Giovanni relays here the personal stories of rebel fighters thrown in jail at the least provocation; of children and families forced to watch loved ones taken and killed by regime forces with dubious justifications; and the stories of the elite, holding pool parties in Damascus hotels, trying to deny the human consequences of the nearby shelling.Delivered with passion, fearlessness and sensitivity, The Morning They Came For Us is an unflinching account of a nation on the brink of disintegration, charting an apocalyptic but at times tender story of life in a jihadist war – and an unforgettable testament to human resilience in the face of devastating, unimaginable horrors.
Stones Into Schools: Promoting Peace With Books, Not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan
Greg Mortenson - 2009
In this dramatic first-person narrative, Greg Mortenson picks up where Three Cups of Tea left off in 2003, recounting his relentless, ongoing efforts to establish schools for girls in Afghanistan; his extensive work in Azad Kashmir and Pakistan after a massive earthquake hit the region in 2005; and the unique ways he has built relationships with Islamic clerics, militia commanders, and tribal leaders. He shares for the first time his broader vision to promote peace through education and literacy, as well as touching on military matters, Islam, and women-all woven together with the many rich personal stories of the people who have been involved in this remarkable two-decade humanitarian effort. Since the 2006 publication of Three Cups of Tea, Mortenson has traveled across the U.S. and the world to share his vision with hundreds of thousands of people. He has met with heads of state, top military officials, and leading politicians who all seek his advice and insight. The continued phenomenal success of Three Cups of Tea proves that there is an eager and committed audience for Mortenson's work and message.
Stealth Jihad: How Radical Islam Is Subverting America without Guns or Bombs
Robert Spencer - 2008
In Stealth Jihad, Islam expert and New York Times bestselling author Robert Spencer blows the whistle on a long-term plot by Islamic jihadists to undermine the United States. This effort aims not to bring America to its knees through attacks with guns or bombs, but to subvert the country from within--by gradually Islamizing America. The ultimate goal, the stealth jihadists themselves declare, is nothing less than the adoption of Islamic law in the United States.Describing the disturbing ease with which stealth jihadists have already become ensconced in the American political and media landscapes, Spencer exposes the full modus operandi of the movement as revealed in a stunning document unveiled in a recent terrorism funding trial. In this unsettling book, he explains: * Which Islamic fundamentalist organization is behind the stealth jihad* How stealth jihadists have reinvented themselves as mainstream civil rights activists--despite their many past declarations of Islamic supremacism* How stealth jihadists played a key role in formulating U.S. government guidelines for the War on Terror* How insistence on "accommodating" Islamic cultural and religious practices in America is part of a calculated strategy to achieve a dangerous larger agenda* The effort by stealth jihadists to whitewash the teaching of Islam in schools* What can be done to defeat the stealth jihad and preserve America's liberty America, Spencer demonstrates, is all but oblivious to a new kind of threat presented by a loosely organized movement whose activists are well funded, highly motivated, and relentless in pursuit of their agenda. This book is a wake-up call for a country so focused on foreign threats that it has left itself vulnerable to a growing danger much closer to home.
Guest House for Young Widows: Among the Women of ISIS
Azadeh Moaveni - 2019
Emma from Hamburg, Sharmeena and three high school friends from London, Nour, a religious dropout from Tunis: all found rebellion or community in political Islam and fell prey to sophisticated propaganda that promised them a cosmopolitan adventure and a chance to forge an ideal Islamic community where they could live devoutly without fear of stigma or repression. It wasn’t long before the militants exposed themselves as little more than violent criminals, more obsessed with power than the tenets of Islam, and the women of ISIS were stripped of any agency, perpetually widowed and remarried, and ultimately trapped in a brutal, lawless society. The fall of the caliphate only brought new challenges to women no state wanted to reclaim. Moaveni’s sensitivity and reporting makes these forgotten women indelible and illuminates the turbulent politics that set them on their paths.
Empire of Fear: Inside the Islamic State
Andrew Hosken - 2015
Hosken does an excellent job of sorting out the American reaction, the failure of the Iraqi leadership in the form of Nouri al-Maliki and others, and how IS has becomes the richest terrorist group in the world."—Kirkus Reviews, (Starred)One of the 10 Best Books of September 2015—The Christian Science Monitor In June 2014 Islamic State launched an astonishing blitzkrieg which saw them seize control of an area in the Middle East the size of Britain. The news was soon filled with their relentless acts of savagery, yet nobody seemed to know who they were or where they’d come from.Now BBC reporter Andrew Hosken delivers the inside story on Islamic State. Through extensive first-hand reporting, Hosken builds a comprehensive picture of IS, their brutal ideology and exterminationist methods. Equally compelling and horrifying, Empire of Fear reveals how Islamic State came to be, explores how they might be defeated and asks a frightening question — if they were brought down, could we stop another group emerging to replace them?
Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance
Ian Buruma - 2006
It was the emblematic crime of our moment: On a cold November day in Amsterdam, an angry young Muslim man, Mohammed Bouyeri, the son of Moroccan immigrants, shot and killed the celebrated and controversial Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, great-grandnephew of Vincent and iconic European provocateur, for making a movie with the vocally anti-Islam Somali-born Dutch politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali that "blasphemed" Islam. After Bouyeri shot van Gogh, he calmly stood over the body and cut his throat with a curved machete, as if performing a ritual sacrifice, which in a very real sense he was. The murder horrified quiet, complacent, prosperous Holland, a country that prides itself on being a bastion of tolerance, and sent shock waves across Europe and around the world. Shortly thereafter, Ian Buruma returned to his native country to try to make sense of it all and to see what larger meaning should and shouldn't be drawn from this story. The result is Buruma's masterpiece: a book with the intimacy and narrative control of a true-crime page-turner and the intellectual resonance we've come to expect from one of the most well-regarded journalists and thinkers of our time. Ian Buruma's entire life has led him to this narrative: In his hands, it is the exemplary tale of our age, the story of what happens when political Islam collides with the secular West and tolerance finds its limits.
The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War Without End
Peter W. Galbraith - 2006
The USA invaded Iraq with grand ambitions to bring democracy & thereby transform the Middle East. Instead, Iraq has disintegrated into three constituent components: a pro-western Kurdistan in the north, an Iran-dominated Shiite entity in the south & a chaotic Sunni Arab region in the center. The country is plagued by insurgency & is in the opening phases of a potentially catastrophic civil war. George W. Bush broke up Iraq when he ordered its invasion in '03. The USA not only removed Saddam Hussein, it also smashed & later dissolved the institutions by which Iraq's Sunni Arab minority ruled: its army, its security services & the Baath Party. With these institutions gone & irreplaceable, the basis of an Iraqi state has disappeared. This book describes the administration's strategic miscalculations behind the war as well as the blunders of the occupation. There was the failure to understand the intensity of ethnic & religious divisions. This was followed by incoherent & inconsistent strategies for governing, the failure to spend money for reconstruction, the misguided effort to create a national army & police, then the turning over of the country's management to Republican political loyalists rather than qualified professionals. As a matter of morality the Iraqi Kurds are no less entitled to independence than are Lithuanians, Croatians or Palestinians. If the country's majority Shiites want to run their own affairs, or even have their own state, on what democratic principle should they be denied? If the price of a unified Iraq is another dictatorship it's too high a price to pay. The USA must focus now, not on preserving or forging a unified Iraq, but on avoiding a spreading civil war. It must accept the reality of Iraq's breakup & work with Iraq's Shiites, Kurds & Sunni Arabs to strengthen the already semi-independent regions. If they're properly constituted, these regions can provide security, tho not all will be democratic. There's no easy exit from Iraq. We have to relinquish present strategy--trying to build national institutions when there is in fact no nation. That effort is doomed. It will only leave the USA with an open-ended commitment in circumstances of uncontrollable turmoil. Galbraith has been in Iraq many times over the last 21 years during historic turning points for the country: the Iran-Iraq War, the Kurdish genocide, the '91 uprising, the immediate aftermath of the '03 war & the writing of Iraq's constitutions. In The End of Iraq, he offers 1sthand observations of the men who are now Iraq's leaders. He draws on his nearly two decades of involvement in Iraq policy working for the US government to appraise what has occurred & what will happen. This book is a definitive account of the war & its ramifications.
9-11
Noam ChomskyRadio B92 - 2001
involvement with Afghanistan, media control, and the long-term implications of America's military attacks abroad. Informed by his deep understanding of the gravity of these issues and the global stakes, 9-11 demonstrates Chomsky's impeccable knowledge of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and South Asia, and sheds light on the rapidly shifting balance of world power. Speaking out against escalating violence, Chomsky critically examines the United States' own foreign policy record and considers what international institutions might be employed against underground networks and national states accused of terrorism. 9-11's analysis still stands as a measure of how well the media is able to serve its role of informing the citizenry, so crucial to our democracy in times of war.
The Wrong Enemy: America in Afghanistan, 2001–2014
Carlotta Gall - 2014
She knows just how much this war has cost the Afghan people, and how much damage can be traced to Pakistan and its duplicitous government and intelligence forces. Now that American troops are withdrawing, it is time to tell the full history of how we have been fighting the wrong enemy, in the wrong country.Gall combines searing personal accounts of battles and betrayals with moving portraits of the ordinary Afghans who endured a terrible war of more than a decade. Her firsthand accounts of Taliban warlords, Pakistani intelligence thugs, American generals, Afghan politicians, and the many innocents who were caught up in this long war are riveting. Her evidence that Pakistan fueled the Taliban and protected Osama bin Laden is revelatory. This is a sweeping account of a war brought by well-intentioned American leaders against an enemy they barely understood, and could not truly engage.
I Was Told to Come Alone: My Journey Behind the Lines of Jihad
Souad Mekhennet - 2017
I was not to carry any identification, and would have to leave my cell phone, audio recorder, watch, and purse at my hotel. . . ."For her whole life, Souad Mekhennet, a reporter for The Washington Post who was born and educated in Germany, has had to balance the two sides of her upbringing - Muslim and Western. She has also sought to provide a mediating voice between these cultures, which too often misunderstand each other.In this compelling and evocative memoir, we accompany Mekhennet as she journeys behind the lines of jihad, starting in the German neighborhoods where the 9/11 plotters were radicalized and the Iraqi neighborhoods where Sunnis and Shia turned against one another, and culminating on the Turkish/Syrian border region where ISIS is a daily presence. In her travels across the Middle East and North Africa, she documents her chilling run-ins with various intelligence services and shows why the Arab Spring never lived up to its promise. She then returns to Europe, first in London, where she uncovers the identity of the notorious ISIS executioner "Jihadi John," and then in France, Belgium, and her native Germany, where terror has come to the heart of Western civilization.Mekhennet's background has given her unique access to some of the world's most wanted men, who generally refuse to speak to Western journalists. She is not afraid to face personal danger to reach out to individuals in the inner circles of Al Qaeda, the Taliban, ISIS, and their affiliates; when she is told to come alone to an interview, she never knows what awaits at her destination.Souad Mekhennet is an ideal guide to introduce us to the human beings behind the ominous headlines, as she shares her transformative journey with us. Hers is a story you will not soon forget.
Poems from Guantanamo: The Detainees Speak
Marc Falkoff - 2007
detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. According to Department of Defense data, fewer than half of them are accused of committing any hostile act against the United States or its allies. In hundreds of cases, even the circumstances of their initial detainment are questionable. This collection gives voice to the men held at Guantánamo. Available only because of the tireless efforts of pro bono attorneys who submitted each line to Pentagon scrutiny, Poems from Guantánamo brings together twenty-two poems by seventeen detainees, most still at Guantánamo, in legal limbo. If, in the words of Audre Lorde, poetry “forms the quality of light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change,” these verses—some originally written in toothpaste, others scratched onto foam drinking cups with pebbles and furtively handed to attorneys—are the most basic form of the art. Death Poem by Jumah al Dossari Take my blood. Take my death shroud and The remnants of my body. Take photographs of my corpse at the grave, lonely. Send them to the world, To the judges and To the people of conscience, Send them to the principled men and the fair-minded. And let them bear the guilty burden before the world, Of this innocent soul. Let them bear the burden before their children and before history, Of this wasted, sinless soul, Of this soul which has suffered at the hands of the "protectors or peace." Jumah al Dossari is a thirty-three-year old Bahraini who has been held at Guantanamo Bay for more than five years. He has been in solitary confinement since the end of 2003 and, according to the U.S. military, has tried to kill himself twelve times while in custody.
The New Jackals: Ramzi Yousef, Osama bin Laden, and the Future of Terrorism
Simon Reeve - 1999
Ramzi Yousef, the young British-educated terrorist who masterminded the attack, had been seeking to topple the twin towers and cause tens of thousands of fatalities. An intensive FBI investigation into the crime quickly developed into a man-hunt that took top FBI agents across the globe. But even with the FBI on his trail, Yousef continued with his campaign of terror. He bombed an airplane and an Iranian shrine. He tried to kill Benazir Bhutto, the former Pakistani Prime Minister, and planned to assassinate the Pope, President Clinton and simultaneously destroy 11 airliners over the Pacific Ocean using tiny undetectable bombs. He also plotted an attack on the CIA headquarters with a plane loaded with chemical weapons. His pursuers dubbed Yousef "an evil genius." During their investigation, FBI agents discovered that Yousef was funded and sent on some of his attacks by Osama bin Laden, a mysterious Saudi millionaire. By the mid-1990s they realized bin Laden had become the most influential sponsor of terrorism in the world, and agents now conclude that since the early 1990s a small group of terrorists supported by bin Laden have dominated international terrorism. These "Afghan Arabs" helped defeat the Soviets in Afghanistan before killing thousands of people in campaigns against governments in the West, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. When bin Laden's followers attacked American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania on 7 August 1998, killing 224 people, the U.S. finally launched cruise missile strikes in an attempt to destroy his secret organization. Drawing on unpublished reports, interrogation files, interviews with senior FBI agents who hunted Yousef, intelligence sources and government figures including Benazir Bhutto, Simon Reeve gives a harrowing account of Yousef's bombings, offers a revealing insight into his background, and details the FBI's man-hunt to catch him. Reeve explains how Yousef was one of bin Laden's first operatives and documents bin Laden's life and emergence as the leader of a potent terrorist organization, giving fascinating insights into the man President Clinton has called "the pre-eminent organizer and financier of international terrorism in the world today." Highly detailed and yet immensely readable, The New Jackals sheds new light on two of the world's most notorious terrorists. Reeve warns that Yousef and bin Laden are just the first of a new breed of terrorist, men with no restrictions on mass killing. Reeve also offers evidence that bin Laden's organization may already have chemical and nuclear weapons and explains why the world could soon face attacks by terrorists with weapons of mass destruction.
The Dream Palace of the Arabs: A Generation's Odyssey
Fouad Ajami - 1998
Ultimately, they came to face disappointment, exile, and, on occasion, death. Brilliantly weaving together the strands of a tumultuous century in Arab political thought, history, and poetry, Ajami takes us from the ruins of Beirut's once glittering metropolis to the land of Egypt, where struggle rages between a modernist impulse and an Islamist insurgency, from Nasser's pan-Arab nationalist ambitions to the emergence of an uneasy Pax Americana in Arab lands, from the triumphalism of the Gulf War to the continuing anguished debate over the Israeli-Palestinian peace accords.For anyone who seeks to understand the Middle East, here is an insider's unflinching analysis of the collision between intellectual life and political realities in the Arab world today.
World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism
Norman Podhoretz - 2007
Now, in this provocative and powerfully argued book, he takes on the most controversial issue of our time—the war against the global network of terrorists that attacked us on 9/11.From the Trade Paperback edition.