Product Description

Pandora s Boxes is the much anticipated second volume of Laurent Murawiec s The Mind of Jihad, a groundbreaking study detailing the intellectual and cultural sources of the Muslim way of war. Jihad, as Murawiec explains, is a permanent feature of Islamic history, a legally sanctioned war against the infidel that triumphed throughout the ages and expanded the dar al-Islam in Byzantium, the Christian Near East, Persia and India. Jihad was gradually turned back by the West, and seemingly lay dormant for centuries. However, with the onset of European modernity, jihadist ideology adopted new methods. With regard to the eruption of jihad, Murawiec emphasizes that: Jihad, the war to uphold the writ of Islam or aggrandize its domination over the world, did not start with the presence of American troops in Saudi Arabia after 1990, with the establishment of Israel in 1948, with the birth of India and the partition of Kashmir in 1947 or, for that matter, with any modern event. Jihad started when the prophet Muhammad was preparing his forcible conquest of Mecca from his exile in Medina. In contrast, modern jihad erupted with the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979. It was a result of all the main political pathologies of the twentieth century, led by the parade of totalitarian ideologies, but transformed by its absorption into the Islamic cultural matrix. While the first volume The Mind of Jihad examined the tribal and religious roots of jihad, the second part Pandora s Boxes focuses on four main issues: The roots of jihad in the nomadic way of war to the rise of a fully fledged Muslim conception of jihad, The never-interrupted practice of Muslim war against the rest of the world, The German and the Soviet contributions to jihad in the modern era, And finally, the development, from the Quran to today, of a notion of jihad as terror. Murawiec s wide scholarship, penetrating analysis and deft narrative make Pandora s Boxes essential reading for policymakers, academic experts, journalists and anyone with a stake in fully understanding the ideological composition and lethal nature of jihad.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1381562 in Books
• Published on: 2007-06-01
• Binding: Paperback
• 225 pages

About the Author
Laurent Murawiec, a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute, has published volumes on modern warfare, the Chinese way of war, information warfare, Saudi Arabia and a translation of Carl von Clausewitz. He has lectured widely and taught at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. Murawiec lives in Washington, D.C.

Customer Reviews

A must read book
This is a must read book for people who want to understand the global jihad that is observed all over the world.
The book is well written and well documented.

Garbage and waste of time
save your money and time, this book is one in the series of hate clubs and bigoted minded xenophobic will find it entralling and enjoying. The author propagates his viliful toxins against Islam and the prophet and carfully spuns all lies, deciets and fabrication and whoa we have a book. if you are one of the haters you are bound to enjoy this book. shalom