Jihad - The Trail of Political Islam

A landmark study of the rise of Islamic extremism, Jihad follows the history and spread of this new political-religious phenomenon from its beginnings as a militant rebellion in the Middle East during the 1970s to its culmination in a devastating onslaught on the West in 2001. Gilles Kepel explains how their jihad - or ''Holy Struggle'' - aimed to establish a global Islamic state based solely on a strict interpretation of the Qur''an clashes with the values of Western democracies. Kepel-s exploration of Jihadism is informed by his journeys throughout the Muslim world to gather documents, interviews and archival material inaccessible to most scholars.