Fawaz Gerges gives an intimate and nuanced look what constitutes as a Jihadist in today's post 9/11 world in this very anecdotal book. Gerges interviews a diverse cast of self proclaimed Jihadists from across the Arab world and mixes in a few personal tales from his childhood days in war torn Lebanon. As a result this book is relatively easy to read, flows well and is not as dry as other books on this subject that I've read.

Gerges's principal thesis seems to be that the Jihadist movement is far from being monolithic, elements within the community will differ on a wide variety of subjects that will range from goals to methods. This book does an excellent job in showing the various insights of Muslims. What was most surprising to me was the views of some of the very anti-American Jihadists that were interviewed by Gerges and their opposition to Bin Laden and his Al Qaeda movement. While they detest American foreign policy in general and specifically our support for Israel, they also believe that Bin Laden's actions are largely un-Islamic and extremely counterproductive for the global Jihad movement. I especially found fascinating his interviews with members of Hezbollah just after 9/11. They go to great lengths to denounce the horrific attack and to distinguish their movement from Bin Laden's.

What becomes apparent after reading this book is that there was an unique opportunity post-9/11 to engage some of the more moderate Jihadists and to quarantine the extreme sect represented by those like Bin Laden and Zawahiri. The war on terror cannot be won alone by smart bombs and soldiers. We need to find common ground and d?©tente with the vast Muslim world that does not view world in the same nihilistic way as Bin Laden and his followers. However this opportunity was severely set back for the foreseeable future due to our invasion of Iraq, however well intentioned by the Bush administration, followed sheer incompetence and failure of the post war reconstruction and occupation which radicalized the Ummah (worldwide Muslim community) almost as much as the creation of Israel.

I've just started this and I am enjoying it.

His insights are good and the history he covers is very interesting. It was amazing to me that the first cells were created in 1967.

Being of middle eastrn descent himself his comments are evenhanded and not condemning. His goal is to inform not condemn and so far it had done a good job of that.