Landscapes of the Jihad Militancy, Morality, Modernity By Faisal Devji (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2005. 164 pages.)

Abstract

In recent years, more has been written about jihad than any other single topic
related to Islam. Faisal Devji tries to shed light on the people behind the slogans, documents concerning terrorism, and their inner logic by analyzing the
writings, interviews, and communiqués of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-
Zawahiri, as well as the will of Muhammad Atta (pp. 113-15). These and
other illustrations clearly reflect the ideological viewpoint of the “jihadists.”
This book, an interesting historical and cultural analysis of the so-called
“jihadi” movement and its representatives today, focuses on the globalization
of jihad’s moral and aesthetic dimensions. The author deals with its conceptual
landscapes, namely, al-Qaeda’s models of belief and action. In his preface,
Devji suggests that both the 1998 terror attacks against the American
embassies in Dar al-Salaam and Nairobi and 9/11, all undertaken by al-
Qaeda, turned jihad into a global weapon of spiritual conflict. Thus, its focus
has extended far beyond its original struggle against the Soviet occupation of
Afghanistan. Devji explains: “Two factors make the Jihad into a global
movement: the failure of local struggle and the inability to control a global
landscape of operations by the politics of intentionality” (p. 31) ...