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Faisal Devji's "Landscapes of the Jihad"

Truly everything you wanted to know about al-Qaeda but were afraid to ask... Landscapes of the Jihad

“One of the most intelligent analyses of the world-view of the militant Islamist.”—The New Statesman

“A brilliant long essay on the ethical underpinnings of modern jihad. . . . Martyrdom, observes Devji rightly, ‘only achieves meaning by being witnessed by the media.’ It is, in short, a horrendous form of advertising.”—New York Review of Books

"Do not approach this challenging essay . . . expecting a familiar narrative of al-Qaeda and its founder, or of the eponymous ‘war on terror.’ Devji dispenses with conventional analysis and with much that is regarded as received wisdom. . . . Devji describes how jihad has subordinated the local to the global. He plays down its Middle Eastern origins and he stresses its diverse sources (Shia and Sufi as well as Sunni) as well as its heterodox innovations. Bin Laden's transformation of jihad, for example, from a collective to an individual duty, is a radical departure from the classical Islamic tradition. But how else could a global movement operate in a post-modern world where Muslims are moved to applause or to action by some spectacular act of violence, which they see on a television or computer screen? Conventional forms of top-down recruitment and mobilisation are, it seems, as passe as conventional politics. . . . Landscapes of the Jihad is, in its unconventional thinking, an oasis in the wearisome desert of al-Qaeda studies. It is, in the best possible sense, subversive."—The Economist