The Far Enemy: Why Jihad Went Global
by Fawaz A. Gerges
Cambridge University Press, $211
Although often thought of as a unified movement, militant Islamism is fractured, spent and in danger of dying. By assaulting the west and murdering Muslims, violent Islamism has written its own death warrant. Its nihilists have lost almost every war that they've launched (whether intellectual or on the field) and represent a vision that even jihadists themselves are increasingly rejecting. That's the argument Fawaz A. Gerges, Middle Eastern studies professor at Sarah Lawrence College in New York state, makes in The Far Enemy: Why Jihad Went Global.
Exploring the history of the jihadist movement to the present, Gerges asserts that it's living on borrowed time. Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, far from being heroes to most Muslims, are despised as mass murderers.
A tiny minority materially supports the groups they represent and, outside of the Iraq theatre, relatively few Muslims are drawn to their call. That undoubtedly comes as news to many in the west who are treated to a constant stream of stories proclaiming the vastness of al-Qaeda, the rage on the so-called Arab street and the uncounted numbers rushing to battle on behalf of the Muslim ummah.