Al Qaeda in Its Own Words [Hardcover]

Professor Gilles Kepel (Editor), Jean-Pierre Milelli (Editor), Pascale Ghazaleh (Translator), Omar Saghi (Introduction), Thomas Hegghammer (Introduction), Stéphane Lacroix (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 30, 2008

Despite the frequent appearances of Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri on television screens worldwide, Al Qaeda remains an elusive entity. As the world has grown increasingly familiar with the spectacle of Islamist terrorism, Al Qaeda’s essential worldview has remained bewilderingly opaque. To reveal its inner workings, Gilles Kepel and his collaborators, all scholars of Arabic and Islam, have collected and brilliantly annotated key texts of the major figures from whom the movement has drawn its beliefs and direction. The resulting volume offers an unprecedented glimpse into the assumptions of the salafist jihadists who have reshaped political life at the beginning of the third millennium.

Excerpts from the work of Azzabdallah Azzam, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama Bin Laden, and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi—drawn from speeches, internet postings, and published writings—tell the story of Al Qaeda’s evolution, from its origins in the Afghan war through the war in Iraq. These texts reveal the rational, discursive mode used to persuade and to justify violent armed struggle in a universe defined by militant Islam. Substantial interpretive introductions to each leader’s work and extensive critical commentary provide unparalleled access to the intellectual and doctrinal context of Al Qaeda in which these radical ideas have taken shape.

By viewing Al Qaeda from within, this indispensable volume reveals the terrorist network’s insidious role in the global web culture of today and the full dimensions of its frightening threat to world stability and security.

(20080211)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

With this book, Kepel and Milelli, professors at the Institute for Political Studies in Paris, have produced a seminal study of al-Qaeda, introducing the key texts and figures inspiring this still shadowy movement. Al-Qaeda's roots can be traced to Palestinian scholar/activist Abdallah Azzam, the Imam of Jihad, whose writings imbued messianic and militant elements into the struggle in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi were profoundly influenced by Azzam's work and eventually established martyrdom operations as the vehicle to secure religious legitimacy for their political aims. Al-Qaeda's writings, mostly disseminated electronically, emphasize Islam's unending struggle to establish its domination over its eternal enemies: the unbelievers, the infidels, the apostates. Kepel and Milelli compellingly present the online texts that serve as al-Qaeda's doctrine, dissecting the discourse and identifying the images and rhetoric al-Qaeda depends upon. This view of al-Qaeda from within presents sobering evidence of the threat al-Qaeda poses and is an indispensable read. (Apr.)
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Review

Most Americans may think they already know everything they need to know about Al Qaeda's founding figures, short of the survivors' physical location. Sooner or later, from natural or unnatural causes, Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri will die. Their positions, arguments, and references, however, will not. This book--and especially the information supplied in the notes--offers its readers a guided tour of Al Qaeda's intellectual and discursive world. It is a tour we all need to take, and the sooner the better.
--Anne Sa'adah, Dartmouth College (20071228)

With this book, Kepel and Milelli, professors at the Institute for Political Studies in Paris, have produced a seminal study of al-Qaeda, introducing the key texts and figures inspiring this still shadowy movement...Kepel and Milelli compellingly present the online texts that serve as al-Qaeda's "doctrine," dissecting the discourse and identifying the images and rhetoric al-Qaeda depends upon. This view of al-Qaeda from within presents sobering evidence of the threat al-Qaeda poses and is an indispensable read. (Publishers Weekly )

Despite all the political and popular attention that it has received in the last six years, Al Qaeda's essential worldview still remains largely unexplained. Written statements and television appearances by its leaders provide an occasional glimpse. This book is an incisive insight into the intellectual and discursive world of Al Qaeda that might just survive the lifetime of its present leadership. To reveal its inner workings, Gilles Kepel and his collaborators have collected and annotated key texts of the major figures from whom the movement has drawn its beliefs--Azzabdallah Azzam, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama Bin Laden, and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. (Businessworld )

Impeccably researched and richly detailed...[Al Qaeda in Its Own Words] provides readers with some insight into and understanding of the theology and doctrine that forged al-Qa'ida and the rationale that has driven its global terror campaign for almost two decades...[The] collection of jihadist excerpts and extant commentary offers fascinating views of the personal motivations and historical influences that shaped bin Laden...A volume indispensable to a better understanding of the group's world view. Kepel's precise and brilliantly written introduction to the writings and statements, of bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Abdallah Azzam and Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, immediately articulates the difference between the tactic of terrorism (so much the focus of Western democracies' war on terror) and al-Qa'ida's overarching doctrine as an organization that seeks to reshape the world in its own image.
--Peter Khalil (The Australian )

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press; annotated edition edition (April 30, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 067402804X
• ISBN-13: 978-0674028043
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.9 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,065,042 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Confusion Abounds, November 24, 2009

By 

Jazz It Up Baby - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Al Qaeda in Its Own Words (Paperback)

As Raymond Ibrahim stated in the Fall 2009 edition of the Middle East Quarterly, Al Qaeda in Its Own Words provides the translated writings of four jihadis--Abdullah Azzam, Osama bin Laden, Ayman Zawahiri, and Abu Musab Zarqawi. Edited by five people with Kepel, a French sociologist of Islam, as lead editor, it contains a wealth of data that, unfortunately, is presented in a rather confused manner.

The actual words of Al-Qaeda are rarely analyzed or placed in context. Obvious contradictions--such as Al-Qaeda's constant protestations to Americans that its war on them is a response to and derives from U.S. foreign policy while telling Muslims that the jihad must persevere until the globe is governed according to Islamic law--are ignored.

Where objective analysis is wanting, apologetics and hackneyed psychoanalyses predominate: Thus, the "neocons" are akin to Al-Qaeda since "the dual undertakings of 9/11 and the American attack on Iraq ... mirrored each other"; bin Laden--that "nervous, flaccid, eternal adolescent"--opted for a life of jihad due to his "devouring" need for "recognition"; whereas Islamists such as Sayyid Qutb and Ayman al-Zawahiri chose jihad due to the "trauma" and "humiliation" they underwent in Egyptian prisons.

The editors also fail to explain the logic of their selections. Aside from the natural inclusion of bin Laden and Zawahiri--the two men at the heart of Al-Qaeda before and after 9/11--how, exactly, do the two dead fellows (Azzam, Zarqawi) fit in?

Though his writings are an important contribution to the vast corpus of jihadi literature, Azzam, dead since 1989, "can be held responsible only indirectly for the transformation of some Afghan Arab factions into terrorist organizations [i.e., Al-Qaeda]." As for Zarqawi--who had his own agenda and whose claim to fame lay in sheer barbarism and the practice of decapitation--one is at a loss to understand what value his anti-Shi'i diatribes have for understanding Al-Qaeda as an organization and not merely an amorphous body of Salafi jihadism.

To justify the decapitator's inclusion, the editors magnify his legacy, telling us that Zarqawi "ignited and fuelled a civil war with religious overtones between Shi'ites and Sunnis." In fact, the 1,400-year-old Sunni/Shi'i conflict required the elimination of an iron-fisted Saddam Hussein rather than the appearance of a Zarqawi to flare up again.

Much of this confusion could have been excused if the material contained in the book offered readers, as the jacket-cover promises, an "unprecedented glimpse" into the worldview of Al-Qaeda. The fact is that nearly every document contained in Al Qaeda was published earlier in other volumes or on the Internet.

In order to make an original contribution, the editors could have tried offering new insights or analyses on their unoriginal material. Instead, they seem to have taken the easy road by putting together a hodgepodge of previously published material, while offering only banal "analyses" and no synthesis.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very Informative, June 11, 2008

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Dennis J. Mcguckian (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Al Qaeda in Its Own Words (Hardcover)

Very interesting book it is a series of translations of various type of communications from the top Al Qaeda leaders along with personal biographies on each of them. I found reading these communications helpful in giving me an idea of the rationalization of these murderous fanatics

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Resource, December 25, 2009

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C. A. (Bloomington, IN United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Al Qaeda in Its Own Words (Paperback)

An excellent resource of translated writings and statements by top Sunni jihadi leaders and ideologues with commentary and annotation by top scholars of the Middle East and modern Muslim political movements. A valuable resource for students and academics, as well as the educated general reader.