In recent years, the world order has been rocked by an explosive, unexpected and extraordinary phenomenon: political Islam. Beginning in the early 1970s, militants revolted against the regimes in power across the Muslim world and exacerbated political conflicts internationally. Their jihad - or 'Holy Struggle' - aimed to establish a global Islamic state based solely on a strict interpretation of the Qur'an. Jihad is the first comprehensive attempt to follow the history and spread of this new political-religious phenomenon today, from the rise of Al Qaeda to the explosion of support for Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad in the wake of the Second Palestinian Intifada. It is the definitive work on what the West has called 'Islamic Fundamentalism', and offers the boldest assessment of its past, its present, and where it might lead in the future. Jihad is vital reading for everyone concerned with the state of the world today.
Introduction 1 Part I Expansion 1. A Cultural Revolution 23 2. Islam in the Late 1960s 43 3. Building Petro-Islam on the Ruins of Arab Nationalism 61 4. Islamism in Egypt, Malaysia, and Pakistan 81 5. Khomeini's Revolution and Its Legacy 106 6. Jihad in Afghanistan and Intifada in Palestine 136 7. Islamization in Algeria and the Sudan 159 8. The Fatwa and the Veil in Europe 185 Part II Decline 9. From the Gulf War to the Taliban Jihad 205 10. The Failure to Graft Jihad on Bosnia's Civil War 237 11. The Logic of Massacre in the Second Algerian War 254 12. The Threat of Terrorism in Egypt 276 13. Osama bin Laden and the War against the West 299 14. Hamas, Israel, Arafat, and Jordan 323 15. The Forced Secularization of Turkish Islamists 342 Conclusion 361 Notes 379 Glossary 431 Maps 434 Abbreviations 441 Index 443
