The Reluctant Jihadist

The book consists of 2 sections. Section 1 is an interview with, what else, a reluctant jihadist. The second section is a collection of 99 posted blogs with a few interesting twists.

From the author of the award-winning Moth Smoke comes a perspective on love, prejudice, and the war on terror that has never been seen in North American literature. At a café table in Lahore, a bearded Pakistani man converses with a suspicious, and possibly armed, American stranger. As dusk deepens to night, he begins the tale that has brought them to this fateful meeting. . . Changez is living an immigrant’s dream of America. At the top of his class at Princeton, he is snapped up by Underwood Samson, an elite firm that specializes in the “valuation” of companies ripe for acquisition. He thrives on the energy of New York and the intensity of his work, and his infatuation with regal Erica promises entrée into Manhattan society at the same exalted level once occupied by his own family back in Lahore. For a time, it seems as though nothing will stand in the way of Changez’s meteoric rise to personal and professional success. But in the wake of September 11, he finds his position in his adopted city suddenly overturned, and his budding relationship with Erica eclipsed by the reawakened ghosts of her past. And Changez’s own identity is in seismic shift as well, unearthing allegiances more fundamental than money, power, and perhaps even love. Elegant and compelling, Mohsin Hamid’s second novel is a devastating exploration of our divided and yet ultimately indivisible world. “Excuse me, sir, but may I be of assistance? Ah, I see I have alarmed you. Do not be frightened by my beard: I am a lover of America. I noticed that you were looking for something; more than looking, in fact you seemed to be on a mission, and since I am both a native of this city and a speaker of your language, I thought I might offer you my services as a bridge.” —from The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Rafe, a second-generation British citizen, whose grandparents fled India during the separation, grows up with Muslim parents still steeped in their traditional culture. He is unappreciated and bullied at school and so falls under the thrall of a fiery Imam who persuades him to leave his family and join a madrassa in Pakistan. His teachers in the madrassa, however, reject him as a fighter; he is too slight of build and asks too many questions. He is persuaded to return to England, albeit partly radicalised toward the strict adherence of Sharia law, and completes his education to find work in the oil industry. Unfortunately for him, his assistance to his radical Imam brings him under the scrutiny of the anti-terrorist police. He is treated badly by the police and becomes determined to fight, wanting to join Islamic State and the new caliphate. A more moderate Imam persuades him not to flee to Syria, just to become a suicide bomber like other young men, but to help, and see for himself how the caliphate works. He retrains as a paramedic and joins a hospital in Aleppo in the midst of the Syrian Civil War. His subsequent kidnapping by an IS group and forced employment at the main hospital in Raqqa with his colleagues, changes his life and his views. Meanwhile, in America a new president campaigns, and against all the odds is elected. His pre-election anti-Muslim rhetoric leads to an isolationist policy in which America intends to leave the Arab world to its own devices. Like Rafe, events suck America back into the Syrian Iraqi conflict, and the president also is forced to changes his views. As Rafe becomes involved in the clash of American and disparate Arab forces against Islamic State, he gains both stature and self-confidence, but his allegiances begin to change.

Long before the devastation of September 11, 2001, the war on terror raged. The problem was that only one side, radical Islam, was fighting it as a war. For the United States, the frontline was the courtroom. So while a diffident American government prosecuted a relative handful of “defendants,” committed militants waged a campaign of jihad—holy war—boldly targeting America’s greatest city, and American society itself, for annihilation. The jihad continues to this day. But now, fifteen years after radical Islam first declared war by detonating a complex chemical bomb in the heart of the global financial system, former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy provides a unique insider’s perspective on America’s first response. McCarthy led the historic prosecution against the jihad organization that carried out the World Trade Center attack: the “battalions of Islam” inspired by Omar Abdel Rahman,the notorious “Blind Sheikh.” In Willful Blindness, he unfolds the troubled history of modern American counterterrorism. It is a portrait of stark contrast: a zealous international network of warriors dead certain, despite long odds, that history and Allah are on their side, pitted against the world’s lone superpower, unsure of what it knows, of what it fights, and of whether it has the will to win. It is the story of a nation and its government consciously avoiding Islam’s animating role in Islamic terror. From the start, it led top U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies to underestimate, ignore, and even abet zealots determined to massacre Americans. Even today, after thousands of innocent lives have been lost, the United States averts its eyes from this harsh reality.

Determined terrorists take a circuitous route towards their final destination. After losing one of their group on an aging freighter, the remaining trio reach Buenos Aires where they are met by a jihadist who takes them to Ciudad del Estrellas, Paraguay. It is here, with help from others sympathetic to their cause, that preparations are made for the last leg of their journey. After a harrowing plane ride, Jamal and his cohorts are transported across the border by a reluctant "coyote" whose grandson is held hostage as an incentive to get them across safely. Once across the border in Texas, a newly minted American jihadist provides them with a vehicle in which they travel to Houston. Once there, they are given the name of their contact in Rockledge, Missouri; their final destination. Yusef, the only surviving member of a sleeper cell in Rockledge, is a graduate student at the university, having spent his youth at a madrasa in Pakistan. He has lived in Rockledge for the past three years. The first year with another native Pakistani, Ahmed, who keeps Yusef on the straight and narrow path towards martyrdom until he dies tragically in a house fire, leaving Yusef at the mercy of American benevolence from others at the university. Yusef's newfound freedom halts when Jamal rolls into town and pulls in the reins that still attach Yusef to their cause. Shiite versus Sunni, Baptist versus Catholic, none of it matters to Jamal whose one-track mind keeps the other jihadists' in line as they prepare for the culmination of their efforts. Jamal's grandiose plan to detonate a bomb at Ft. Wilson, a sprawling military base thirty miles from Rockledge, nears completion with Yusef's reluctant help.

This is a print on demand edition of a hard to find publication. Examines terrorists¿ involvement in a variety of crimes ranging from motor vehicle violations, immigration fraud, and mfg. illegal firearms to counterfeiting, armed bank robbery, and smuggling weapons of mass destruction. There are 3 parts: (1) Compares the criminality of internat. jihad groups with domestic right-wing groups. (2) Six case studies of crimes includes trial transcripts, official reports, previous scholarship, and interviews with law enforce. officials and former terrorists are used to explore skills that made crimes possible; or events and lack of skill that the prevented crimes. Includes brief bio. of the terrorists along with descriptions of their org., strategies, and plots. (3) Analysis of the themes in closing arguments of the transcripts in Part 2. Illus.

For decades, a new type of terrorism has been quietly gathering ranks in the world. America's ability to remain oblivious to these new movements ended on September 11, 2001. The Islamist fanatics in the global Salafi jihad (the violent, revivalist social movement of which al Qaeda is a part) target the West, but their operations mercilessly slaughter thousands of people of all races and religions throughout the world. Marc Sageman challenges conventional wisdom about terrorism, observing that the key to mounting an effective defense against future attacks is a thorough understanding of the networks that allow these new terrorists to proliferate. Based on intensive study of biographical data on 172 participants in the jihad, Understanding Terror Networks gives us the first social explanation of the global wave of activity. Sageman traces its roots in Egypt, gestation in Afghanistan during the Soviet-Afghan war, exile in the Sudan, and growth of branches worldwide, including detailed accounts of life within the Hamburg and Montreal cells that planned attacks on the United States. U.S. government strategies to combat the jihad are based on the traditional reasons an individual was thought to turn to terrorism: poverty, trauma, madness, and ignorance. Sageman refutes all these notions, showing that, for the vast majority of the mujahedin, social bonds predated ideological commitment, and it was these social networks that inspired alienated young Muslims to join the jihad. These men, isolated from the rest of society, were transformed into fanatics yearning for martyrdom and eager to kill. The tight bonds of family and friendship, paradoxically enhanced by the tenuous links between the cell groups (making it difficult for authorities to trace connections), contributed to the jihad movement's flexibility and longevity. And although Sageman's systematic analysis highlights the crucial role the networks played in the terrorists' success, he states unequivocally that the level of commitment and choice to embrace violence were entirely their own. Understanding Terror Networks combines Sageman's scrutiny of sources, personal acquaintance with Islamic fundamentalists, deep appreciation of history, and effective application of network theory, modeling, and forensic psychology. Sageman's unique research allows him to go beyond available academic studies, which are light on facts, and journalistic narratives, which are devoid of theory. The result is a profound contribution to our understanding of the perpetrators of 9/11 that has practical implications for the war on terror.

They called themselves the Arabian Knights. They were six Yemeni-American friends, a gang of high-school soccer stars, a band of brothers on the grim side streets of Lackawanna's First Ward, just a stone's throw from Buffalo. Later, people would argue about why they left western New York in the spring of 2001 to attend an al-Qaeda camp. Some said they traveled to Afghanistan to become America's first sleeper cell—terrorists slumbering while they awaited orders from on high. Others said that their ill-fated trip was a lark, an adventurous extension of their youthful wrestling with what it meant to be Muslim in America. Dina Temple-Raston returns to Lackawanna to tell the story of a group of young men—born and brought up in small town America—who left otherwise unremarkable lives to attend an al-Qaeda camp. Though they sought to quietly slip back into their roles as middle class Americans, the 9/11 attacks made that impossible. The Jihad Next Door is the story of pre-emptive justice in the age of terror. It follows a handful of ordinary men through an extraordinary time when Muslims in America are often instantly suspect, their actions often viewed through the most sinister lens.

"The Way of the Strangers is an intimate journey into the minds of the Islamic State's true believers. From the streets of Cairo to the mosques of London, Wood interviews supporters, recruiters, and sympathizers of the group...Wood speaks with non-Islamic State Muslim scholars and jihadists, and explores the group's idiosyncratic, coherent approach to Islam...Through character study and analysis, Wood provides a clear-eyed look at a movement that has inspired so many people to abandon or uproot their families.