Daniel Pipes reviewed this book on ' FrontPageCom.' He praised its scholarship highly. He claims that Cook in tracing the development of the concept of Jihad says that aside from a Sufi interpretation of the concept relating it to personal spiritual development ,it has meant in most stages of Islamic history waging total war against one's enemy.
The most alarming element in his review is the fact that the present - day interpretation of Jihad is the most extreme that there has been historically. And the hostility displayed to the non- Muslim world by those who hold this concept is absolute. Thus those who try to sugarcoat the concept ignore the danger inherent in those who espouse it.
It is difficult nowadays to get an objective, nuanced opinion on Islam, neither flattering nor biased against it. If I were to recommend a way to try and achieve that, I would suggest to read several good books on the matter, including this among them, for in my opinion it is quite complete and fairly assessed.
This work aims to answer the following question: Which is the meaning of jihad? Holy war or spiritual striving to improve oneself?
Pursuant to the author, during the first several centuries of Islam the interpretation of jihad was unabashedly aggressive and expansive, and the conquest achieved by Islam in the VII and VIII centuries C.A. have been seen by Muslims as one of the incontrovertible proofs of Islam, so that nowadays they are unwilling to confront the fact that such conquest were basically as unjustified as European colonial conquests. The so-called "greater jihad" (i.e., the one with an ascetic and pacific meaning) seems a patently apologetic device not well attested in the hadith literature, which was adduced in order to overcome a resistance to the acceptance and legitimacy of jihad.
Cook also points out a reasonable outsider must conclude that radical Islam is indeed a legitimate expression of Islam, yet the fact that the majority of contemporary Muslims do not actively participate in militant jihad demonstrates a decisive rejection of which the radical Muslims are keenly aware. The reality is that jihad during the past two centuries has been a dismal failure, with the possible exception of the expulsion of the Soviet Union from Afghanistan. Besides, it also represents a danger to Muslims, for it is all too easy to turn it against them.
All that (and much more that I do not mention in this summary) is developed in 235 pages (footnotes included), the book being divided in the following chapters: 1. Qur'an and Conquest; 2. The "Greater Jihad" and the "Lesser Jihad"; 3 The Crystallization of Jihad Theory: Crusade and Counter-crusade, 4 Jihad during the Nineteenth Century: Renewal and Resistance; 5. Radical Islam and Contemporary Jihad Theory; 6. Globalist Radical Islam and Martyrdom Operations; Afterword; Appendix: Some Translated Documents (e.g. A Communiqu? from Qa'Idat Al-Jihad concerning the Testaments of the Heroes and the Legality of the Washington and New York Operations, April 24, 2002).
Nevertheless, although the content is very interesting, the book often happens to be a tough reading; therefore I have rated the book as a 4 start book (content: 5 starts; pleasure of reading: 3 to 1).
Other books that I would recommend to read would be the following: "The Venture of Islam", by Marshall G. S. Hodgson (nowadays a classic included in any bibliography on Islam); "God's Rule : Government and Islam" by Patricia Crone; "The Turks in World History" by Carter Vaughn Findley; and "Muslims in the West: Redefining the Separation of Church & State" by Sami Awad Aldeeb Abu-Sahlieh.
