Customer Reviews

Future Jihad: Terrorist Strategies Against America

5 star:		(39)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is an outstanding book. The introduction sets the stage for a riveting read and in the first chapter Phares succeeds in explaining complicated Islamic history and Islamic teachings that have created and continue to support violent jihad in a way that anyone can understand. I could hardly put the book down. Walid Phares clearly understands the jihadists' minds. I have watched him on MSNBC. I suspect his incredible understanding is related to being born, raised, educated and having practiced law in Lebanon where terrorism against the U.S. was initiated through the 1983 suicide bombing of the U.S. marine barracks in Beirut that killed 241 U.S. Marines. Phares monitors and analyzes the jihadists' websites (Arabic), has contacts in the Arab world, and is invited to debate jihadist supporting clerics and scholars on al-jazeera and other Arabic TV and radio. This book should be required reading for anyone who truly wants to understand jihad in America and abroad, the deadly threat it presents to the U.S. and the free world, and what we need to do to stop it.

I love to read and have read just about every intelligent book out there on the Global War On Terrorism. WALID PHARES' BOOK IS AN ABSOLUTE MUST-READ for the professional as well as the layman. Never has the threat we face been so clearly outlined as it is here. Jihad is not the innocent "inner struggle" or "defensive" battle that the Islamists would like us to believe, but rather it is an ongoing "offensive" battle at every level of our society - educational, political, economic, diplomatic, religious, military - to remake our nation and the world in the Islamist image. And it's being brought to you by our "good" friends the Wahabi Saudis, the Pan-Arabists, and the mad mullahs of Iran. But if you don't believe me, READ FUTURE JIHAD!

Walid Phares has written a classic book for all times. Every scholar and lay person who deals with terrorism must be sure to read this work. In addition, all law enforcement personnel and policy makers must come to grips with the ideology of jihad as deployed in current history but its antecedents and its future inevitable manifestions as well in order to make reasoned and appropriate interventions.

However, one of the most valuable aspects of this book is Dr. Phares' presentation and explication of Wahhabism, Salafism and how they have become interwoven and at times at odds with Shia Islam a la Kohmeini and Nasrallah. We can no longer afford to overlook, simplify and ignore the history of the past in the West vis a vis jihadi Islam as its 6th not so secret pillar. If I were to draw up list of the top authors and their books, I would cite Walid Phare's Future Jihad, Robert Spencer's Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam, Phyllis Chesler's The New AntiSemitism and her most recent The Death of Feminism [b/c it deals with Islamic gender apartheid and no one has done that yet -- the war on terrorism is essentially a gendered war to annihilate women], Andy Bostom's The Legacy of Islam, Bat Ye'or's Eurabia, Schweitzer & Shai's The Globalization of Terror, Ben Shemesh's translation of the Quran, and the old yet invaluable Dictionary of Islam by Hughes. Phares correctly demonstrates that the Future of Jihad has arrived, it is now and we better not keep sticking our heads in the sand. His book merits more than a 10.

"Future Jihad" is a thorough, detailed, and fact based (not conspiracy theory or emotion based) expose of radical Salafist Islamic Jihadist terrorism. Dr. Phares is from Lebanon, speaks, reads, and writes Arabic, and has studied terrorism for over 20 years. He now works for MSNBC as a Middle Eastern affairs expert. Dr. Phares was one of a handful of people in America trying to warn the U.S. government, BEFORE 9/11, that a terrorist attack on our soil was imminent.

Unfortunately, Dr. Phares and his colleagues were shouted down by the majority of Middle Eastern affairs experts in the U.S., products of our university system (many of whom can teach, but cannot do). Among other things, he was called a "NEOCON" who was trying to start a war (for oil). Interestingly, another reviewer on this site, who first praises Dr. Phares work, then calls him a "NEOCON"(sound familiar?) and criticizes him for not identyfying Dick Cheney, big oil, and Wall Street as the real causes of 9/11.

This is exactly the kind of political rhetoric that Phares said left us so wide open to terrorism; we were so busy fighting each other, that we took our attention off our real enemy. I am especially disturbed by this reviewer because Dr. Phares goes out of his way to leave politics out of his book. He targets no one, calls no one any names, and seeks only to reveal the facts behind terrorism. In fact, after reading this book, it is impossible to tell what political party, if any, Dr. Phares belongs to.

This same reviewer accuses Dr. Phares of overlooking "the larger context of the war on terrorism." In few words, he is upset that Dr. Phares does not blame America for 9/11. Allegedly our support for 44 dictators (usually because the alternative ruler was even worse than that one; even Americans say, "I am voting for "candidate x" only because he or she is not as bad as "candidate y,") Dick Cheney (who was never cited by the 9/11 commission as having any culpabilty in the 9/11 attacks), big oil (which fuels the economy of all of Western Europe, Latin America, East Asia, and North America and keeps us all warm, housed, clothed, fed, and employed), and Wall Street (which also keeps the ecomomies of the developed world running and their people warm, housed, clothed, fed, and employed; there is no Wall Street in Ethiopia, Somalia, and Eritrea, there are no paradises flourishing there), as the reasons for terrorist attacks before, during, and after 9/11.

In few words, this reviewer has a Marxist worldview, and sees the capitalist, democratic republics of the West and the East, which give their people the highest standard of living in the world, the best education in the world, and the most civil rights in the world, as responsible for terrorism.

If the U.S. were only a Marxist paradise like North Korea (where millions are cold and starving), Cuba (from which people risk drowning at sea to flee), Vietman (which slaughtered ONE MILLION people after the U.S. left and uses steamrollers to execute those who dissent with the government{they start with the feet and work their way up...}), Venezuela (Where Hugo Chavez revises the Constitution to keep extending his term limit), or China (where most people have a job, as long as they keep their mouths shut), then the terrorists would not be angry with us anymore and they would leave us alone.

Dr. Phares forcefully refutes this idea in "Future Jihad" by demonstrating that radical salafist Islamic Jihadists hate atheistic Communists MORE THAN ANY OTHER GROUP, and that they saw the USSR as a GREATER threat than the U.S. because no freedom of religion was allowed(and Muslims were having their children indoctrinated as atheists). This is why terrorist attacks against the U.S. INCREASED after the fall of the Soviet Union, because the Salafist Jihadists saw that the "red devil" was gone, and only the "great Satan"(the U.S.) and the "little Satan"(Israel), remained. After these two fall, the radical Salafist Jihadists terrorists see the rest of the world as ripe for the taking.

He also points out that these same radical Salafist Islamic Jihadist terrorists groups are attacking people in Thailand, The Phillipines, Indonesia, India, Russia, Somalia, The Sudan, and other nations, who have NOTHING to do with America, Israel, big oil, Dick Cheney, or Wall Street. The movement is driven by a proactive ideology, not a reactive one: world domination one step at a time.

Dr. Phares uses facts, dates, history, and the Jihadists' own words refutes all of these misconceptions. What fuels radical Salafist Islmaic Jihadism is not U.S. domestic or foreign policy, but the Salafist theology spread by the Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and the Khummeinists in Iran.

This ideology, similar to that of the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacists groups, the Nazis, the fascist Japanese and Italians before and during WWII (Japanese and Italian racial supremacists), and Communists (political and economic supremacists), teaches that Islam is the Master Religion and is destined to RULE THE WORLD. It calls all Muslims to wage Jihad against all non-Muslims and all moderate Muslims who befriend non-Muslims until worldwide domination is achieved. This will come about one neighborhood, one city, one state, and one nation at a time.

What fuels radical Salafist Islamic Jihadism is not America, the West, Israel, Dick Cheney, big oil, or Wall Street, but a radical, violent, intolerant ideology similar to racism, nazism, fascism, and communism. It cannot tolerate any dissent, any debate, or any peaceful coexistence. Dialogue and diplomacy are only useful when they enable the Salafists to buy time, influence, and opportunity for an attack. But peace will only be achieved when they are either victorious or defeated.

Dr. Phares work is outstanding and will make one an overnight expert on the Middle East. He grew up there, he studied these movements, and he backs it up with facts and solid evidence. This one book can win the war on terror, for it exposes an enemy that uses deception and dissimulation to convince its victims that it is not a threat. Then it strikes without warning and without mercy. It worked on 9/11, and the radical Salafist Islamic Jihadists hope to make it work again.

The reviewer with whom I take issue may accuse me of being "biased" because I speak too well of America and of its capitalist economy. I earn $40,000 a year and this capitalist economy keeps me employed. I am simply exercising my First Amendment freedom of speech which Senator Hillary Clinton calls the fundamental right of every American, the right "to debate and to disagree." But for many, this right applies only to themselves; the rest of us are expected to remain silent.

Thankfully, Dr. Walid Phares has chosen not to remain silent, but to put politics and personal attacks aside, and write a nonpartisan book that is designed to inform all Americans and to protect them from ever having to experience another 9/11.

Please read Dr. Phares' book. You will find that you cannot put it down once you start reading it and that you will be ordering multiple copies to give to family and friends.

Thank you for reading my review.

"[W]hat most of us don't know yet, or may not want to accept, is that the pre-9/11 peas is not coming back soon, and may not come back at all." (pg. 253)

While the words quoted above come near the end of the book, they do set the tone of this important book. Mr. Phares does a very credible job of educating the reader in the realities of Jihad within the context of Islam. I learned a lot about the development of the concept of Jihad and how it came to the form that it is seen today. The road was rather tortured and convoluted being mixed with both religion and culture and various branches of Islam as it grew since the death of the prophet.

After educating us, Mr. Phares makes and effort to scare the bejesus out of the reader painting a picture of Wahhabi recruited Jihadists slowly working their way into various positions of power and authority in sensitive government agencies and the faculty of colleges and universities, all attempting to assure that their form of Islam is recognized as the only form of Islam. This ends with a "what if" scenario based on the idea that al Qaeda waited until 2008 to launch the attack on the mainland of the United States. That picture is awesome and bloody with tens, and perhaps hundreds of thousands of people dying all over American soil. In so doing he makes a case that justifies the invasion of Iraq in an ex-post-facto justification that the 43rd Administration did the right thing in invading Iraq even though it posed no direct threat at the time of the invasion.

The author finally gets to the meat of his argument when he proposed what America should, and should not do to prevent the next, and much larger, assault on American soil and citizens. While he holds that the Jihadists will never be eliminated, he holds that they can be reduced to a very manageable number that pose only a small threat to the US and other nations. Among these recommendations are to understand the enemy more completely including a specific declaration of war on the Jihadist organizations, and not on all of Isalm. This act, the author proposes will tend to calm the rest of Islam to understanding just who is suspect and dangerous. Then we are to educate the people of America and "The West" about the realities of Jihad within the Islamic community so that all can recognize a Jihadist when we see/hear one. Finally to support the Islamic peoples who are not potential Jihadists. Those he refers to as "Islamic Humanists" are the key to this final part of the approach.

Underlying all of this is a potential picture of a United States with a 21st Century version of McCarthyism growing where there are congressional inquiries that ask the question: "are you now, or have you ever been a Wahhabist or Jihadist member if the Islamic community?" The final act of the inquiry could be the purging of our military and civilian governmental agencies to ferret out the Jihadist moles in the ranks. It is not a pretty picture. However, that picture points to the one missing element in the book, what makes Mr. Phares, who consistently looks back to his own childhood where he was taught the same stories in the same schools, by the same teachers as many of the Jihadists of today, different in that he never joined the Jihadists. Now that is an important part of the story because it might indicate how many thousands of Islamic people are more like Mr. Phares than like the followers of al Qaeda.

I come away from this book with more knowledge and more questions. I feel that my personal belief that Americans, in order to defeat the Jihadists, must aspire to their own best values and never sink to the levels of the Jihadists regardless of the temptation to be just as bad as they are. I also know that I have a lot more to learn.

The most revlutionary new idea devulged by this short polemic is that Jihad is not merely terror, it is dimplomatic, psychologic and cultural. For the Johadist to win, he doesnt have to kill Americans, he merely has to make America more coopted to Islamism. It is in the sense that the communists didnt have to win the Cold War if America could be made Communist, or that the Nazis didnt have to win WWII if they could make America isolationist. The revlutionary thesis here is that Jihad is so multi-faceted that it penetrates our nation in the most broad way, in order to defeat us not through killing, but through changing out emotions, or religion and our psycology.

A good new book, very original and quite brilliant.

Seth J. Frantzman

I have surveyed books on Jihadist strategies before and after 9/11. Phares' book is the most definitive. It is the first analysis of the real roots of Islamist ideology and its global vision of struggle against infidel powers, seen from its own prism. Phares show us a global angle that escaped many other experts. Two daring innovations: One I was amazed by the negative role of the Middle East Studies community in America in helping the public understand the rising threat. Two, the book's chapter 13 is scary but realistic: no scholar has described what the Jihadists want and could have done. A must read.

This book does an excellent job of connecting 1400 years of dots concerning the clash of Islamic and Western civilizations. Phares explains in great and easy to understand detail what the real struggle is with Islamic terrorism and what its roots really are. The clear and objective message is that few in the West begin to understand the depth or intensity of this ages old struggle and without such an understanding we face a clear and present danger that threatens the very survival of free and democratic countries around the world. Walid reveals the pervasive and tragic disinformation abounding in American Universities perpetuated by massive infusions of Arab petro dollars; all in order subvert American academics into believing in a warm congenial form of moderate accepting Islam that he demonstrates has never existed. A powerful and very important text for everyone that would like a single book that explains the critical number one challenge of the world today.

Walid Phares does an outstanding job of discussing the Jihadist threat facing America. He ties together the attack on 9/11 and all other aspects of the current War on Terror. He does this through insight into the Jihadist penetration of America's academic community. The truly impressive part of this book is that Mr. Phares proves his point in a well supported, academic manner. This book is not a right wing publication designed to generate fear. It is a well-written and thoroughly supported piece of research.

The book is easy to read and flows in a logical progression. Mr. Phares discusses several complex topics. Each chapter, however, is broken down by distinct sub-headings. In this manner, the author is able to take complicated issues and break them into easy to understand parts. For example, he discusses the use of Saudi petro dollars to influence academia. He follows this progression to discuss how academia influences the media, which influences the public, which then influences the Government. The ultimate goal is to generate favorable U.S. policies toward Wahabism.

The 9/11 Commission said the attack on America was a failure of imagination. Mr. Phares, however, offers a different opinion as to why the Government failed to prevent this attack on America. He puts forward the thesis that America was blinded to the threat of Jihad by elitists and apologists in the academic community. He goes on to point out a fact that is intrinsically obvious to everyone. Numerous articles describe Jihad as an internal struggle for peace, as if it were a form of yoga. The more relevant fact is what do the Arab teenagers think about Jihad. The evening news does a good job of illustrating that most of the young Muslims of the Middle East interpret Jihad to mean the killing an infidel. A point that is often over looked.

The book is full of information other than what is described in this review. Mr. Phares goes on to discuss the other strains of Jihadism found in the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran's Khumeinists. The paperback editions of this book carry bonus material in the form of its Afterward. This part takes the reader through an analysis of 2006, one-year after the book's initial publication. A relevant point is that all of his points are backed up with endnotes.

Ultimately, Mr. Phares feels that America must win the war of ideas if it is to beat the Jihadist threat. Several military books discuss the concept of information warfare. This book provides a non-military assessment that reinforces this concept. Bottom line: this book is a well-documented and easy to read analysis of the threat facing America today.

Author Walid Phares is currently NBC's terrorism and Midweast expert and discusses Middle east conflicts with the UN Security Council: his FUTURE JIHAD thus comes from a long-time expert's insights and reveals many fundamental misunderstandings about the aims of terrorist organizations. From individual connections between jihadism and nations around the world to different scenarios of terrorist influences on a global level, FUTURE JIHAD discusses how defenses have been compromised and what it might take to get them up to strength.