GILLES KEPEL, Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002). Pp. 454. $33.95 cloth, $15.95 paper

Extract

In the wake of 11 September 2001, the study of political Islam became a vastly more complicated enterprise. No other event in recent history demonstrated with such literal force how interconnected the phenomenon of Islamic activism—in all it forms—had become. Those scholars who had studied the Arab world suddenly had to pay attention to Iran and Turkey, and to such remote places as Pakistan and Afghanistan. Scholars of South and Southeast Asia had to consider how Indonesian and Malaysian Islam intersected with Khomeinism and Saudi Wahhabism. Thus, like it or not, 11 September set the stage for a rebirth of Islamic studies. Gilles Kepel's Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam marks this coming of age by providing a comprehensive account of the evolution of political Islam as a national, regional, and global phenomenon. No other work offers such a careful and well-written balance of analytical parsimony and empirical reach. For this reason alone, the book will be a classic for years to come.