It would be impossible to be taken seriously as a reporter or expert on Russia, France, Germany, Latin America, or perhaps even China or Japan without knowing the requisite languages but for "Islam" no linguistic knowledge seems to be necessary since what one is dealing with is considered to be a psychological deformation, not a "real" culture or religion.

--Edward Said, Covering Islam

The Far Enemy: Why Jihad Went Global by Fawaz Gerges is essential reading for anyone interested in the story behind Al Qaeda and the events that led up to the spectacular terrorist attacks on America in 2001. Gerges, an Egyptian Christian who teaches international affairs and Middle Eastern studies at Sarah Lawrence College in New York, gives an intimate portrait of the events and personalities that caused radical Islamists to abandon their traditional fight against al-Adou al-Qareeb, or the near enemy (autocratic Muslim regimes such as Egypt), and take on the far more dangerous foe, al-Adou al-Baeed, or the far enemy (the United States and the West).

In the process, Gerges offers a penetrating critique of the way terrorism and terrorists are portrayed in the Western media and, more generally, the shallow manner in which Muslim societies are seen through Western eyes. Through voluminous interviews with jihadis themselves, a close reading of Al Qaeda bigwig Ayman al-Zawahiri's self-serving memoirs and a careful examination of countless documents culled from captured Al Qaeda hard drives in Afghanistan, Gerges provides a detailed look into the inner workings of the jihad world--and acts as a counterweight to the sloppy scholarship that informs the prevailing ideas about the threats we face from Islamic terrorism. This book is a challenge to the U.S and the West in general to rise above platitudes and delve into real history with all of its complexity. It couldn't come at a more critical time.

The jihadist movement was born in the early 1970s as a reaction against the authoritarian regime in Egypt and was inspired by Sayyid Qutb, a radical Islamist who was executed by the Egyptian state in 1966 for opposing the Nasser government. Qutb and the jihadis who followed in his wake elevated the importance of jihad, or armed struggle, believing it to be equal with the five pillars of Islam. None other than Osama bin Laden himself believes that jihad is second only to faith as a Muslim ideal--a notion rejected by virtually every religious authority in the Islamic world.

Gerges points out that since the time of Mohammad, jihad has been seen as fard kifaya, or a collective duty, the agenda of which can only be determined by the whole community. Jihadis, on the other hand, consider it to be fard 'ayn, or a permanent and personal obligation. As such, jihadis believe that they are justified in taking up arms and carrying out terrorist attacks on their own authority.

Fawaz corrects several misconceptions regarding jihad and its place in Islam. The first is to note that while all jihadis share this conception of jihad, they represent "a tiny ... minority," even among Islamists. Theirs is far from the dominant view. The second misconception--and the crux of this book's argument--is that the jihadist movement has always seen the United States and the West as its primary enemy. Quite the contrary, Al Qaeda's attack on America was the result of a "civil war within the jihadist movement" and "represented a monstrous mutation, an implosion from within, not just another historical phase in the movement's evolution."