Jihad (the Trail Of Political Islam)

By (author) Kepel Gilles
Description:
A landmark study of the rise of Islamic extremism, Jihad follows the history and spread of this new political-religious phenomenon from its beginnings as a militant rebellion in the Middle East during the 1970s to its culmination in a devastating onslaught on the West in 2001. Gilles Kepel explains how their jihad – or ''Holy Struggle'' – aimed to establish a global Islamic state based solely on a strict interpretation of the Qur''an clashes with the values of Western democracies. Kepel’s exploration of Jihadism is informed by his journeys throughout the Muslim world to gather documents, interviews and archival material inaccessible to most scholars.
Table of contents:

Introduction
Part 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

Review quote:
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.
Review quote:
Deeply researched, deeply measured and deeply instructive – the best survey available and likely to remain so
Review quote:
Kepel''s work... spans the world of political Islam, from the assassination of Egypt''s President Anwar Sadat, to the establishment of Osama bin Laden''s terrorist network in Afghanistan. He has the knack of explaining how events in one part of the Islamic world have affected developments elsewhere
Review quote:
No-one else has attempted so bold an overview of the Islamist phenomenon. Of all the books on this subject, this is the most challenging and the most illuminating
Review quote:
Simply excellent
Biographical note:
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.
Promotional headline:
A comprehensive history of Islamist political movements, Jihad charts the evolution of Jihadism and assess its rise, fall and future.
Description for collection:
Bringing together books and thinkers that have opened up startling new ways of looking at the world, the Bloomsbury Revelations series celebrates the originality and excellence of Bloomsbury Academic''s non-fiction publishing. Including books by the likes of Carol Adams, Winston Churchill, Slavoj Zizek, Ferdinand de Saussure, Ronald Dworkin, Constantin Stanislavski, Susan Strange and Gilles Deleuze, this is an essential l