The Jihad Next Door: The Lackawanna Six and Rough Justice in an Age of Terror [Hardcover]

Dina Temple-Raston (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1586484036 | ISBN-13: 978-1586484033 | Publication Date: September 11, 2007

They called themselves the Arabian Knights. They were six Yemeni-American friends, a gang of high-school soccer stars, a band of brothers on the grim side streets of Lackawanna's First Ward, just a stone's throw from Buffalo.

Later, people would argue about why they left western New York in the spring of 2001 to attend an al-Qaeda camp. Some said they traveled to Afghanistan to become America's first sleeper cell—terrorists slumbering while they awaited orders from on high. Others said that their ill-fated trip was a lark, an adventurous extension of their youthful wrestling with what it meant to be Muslim in America.

Dina Temple-Raston returns to Lackawanna to tell the story of a group of young men—born and brought up in small town America—who left otherwise unremarkable lives to attend an al-Qaeda camp. Though they sought to quietly slip back into their roles as middle class Americans, the 9/11 attacks made that impossible.

The Jihad Next Door is the story of pre-emptive justice in the age of terror. It follows a handful of ordinary men through an extraordinary time when Muslims in America are often instantly suspect, their actions often viewed through the most sinister lens.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

The Lackawanna Six, Yemeni American friends living in straitened circumstances outside Buffalo, New York, accepted Kamel Derwish as their mentor in the hope of becoming better Muslims, unaware of his involvement in the attack on the USS Cole and his role as an al-Qaeda recruiter. Temple-Raston, National Public Radio's FBI correspondent and a superbly gifted author, describes with a journalist's urgency and a novelist's sensibility Lackawanna's close-knit Yemeni community; the fateful journey of the six friends to Yemen, Pakistan, and Afghanistan; their frightening experiences at an al-Qaeda training camp; and the political frenzy surrounding their high-profile prosecution. As she sensitively portrays each of the five men currently behind bars, she reveals their dire naïveté and profound regrets, which stand in stark contrast to her revelations regarding the Bush administration's use of the Lackawanna case to bolster the Patriot Act and to justify the assassination of Derwish, an American citizen. Compelling and clarifying, Temple-Raston's invaluable exposé will stand as one illuminated chapter in a dark saga of governmental crimes and cover-ups. Seaman, Donna

Review

"A well-written detective story." -- Washington Post, January 30, 2008

"[A] well-wrought investigative report about six young Arab-Americans from western New York who stumbled into terrorism. NPR correspondent Temple-Raston... delves deeply into the lives of these residents of Lackawanna... An elegant examination of how the rules of justice have changed since 9/11." -- Kirkus, August 1, 2007

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 312 pages
• Publisher: PublicAffairs (September 11, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1586484036
• ISBN-13: 978-1586484033
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,259,095 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #40 in Books > History > Middle East > Yemen

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Confused Theme, September 30, 2007

By 

C. Bolton (Phoenix, Arizona) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Jihad Next Door: The Lackawanna Six and Rough Justice in an Age of Terror (Hardcover)

My overall evaluation of this book is stated in the title of this review. The author doesn't develop one theme throughout this book, but jumps around between several different themes. Worse, some of these themes have merit and some don't. Some examples:

Theme 1: The Yemenite community in Lackawanna was typical of an ethnic/immigrant community anywhere in America in the past 100 years until this incident and its fallout. - One wishes this were true, but apparently it isn't, and Temple-Raston herself can't help but note things like this community's general celebration of the attack on the U.S. Cole (p.30), their insularity, the susceptibility of their youth to religious radicals, and their celebration of the escape of one of the "6" [really 9] from Yemenite authorities. Comparing this with the "illegal" Mexican-American community where I live, I don't see any similarity at all. My Mexican-American neighbors are rabidly pro-American [curiously, even when being chased by Homeland Security] and would like nothing better than for the U.S. model to be emulated everywhere.

Theme 2: The 6 [or 9] were just young alienated youth who really weren't at all interested in terrorism, but just wanted "to belong" and reaffirm their ethnic identity. They were misled into going to the Al Queda camps under the guise that they would be training to fight Russians and Serbs, not Americans. It was "an adventure" for the 9, not a serious taking up of arms. - The author adduces some evidence for this theme, but then, again, notes facts like the Lackawanna youth who ended up staying in the Middle East clearly declared to his fellows that he wanted to be a martyr and die for the cause. [One wonders why things were so clear to this young man but purportedly weren't at all clear to the other 8.] By the time that most of these youth had declared that the life of a Jihad warrior wasn't for them, it had been made clear to all 9 [if it wasn't crystal clear before - and it should have been crystal clear before] that the enemy was the U.S. and Israel, not the Russians and the Serbs. But was that their motivation for leaving the camp, or was their motivation that they didn't REALLY want to dedicate their lives and future to a cause, even the cause of "defending" fellow Muslims? The author doesn't seem to really know.

Theme 3: America is turning into a police state and giving up basic civil liberties gained from hundreds of years of struggle against tyranny. - This is the theme the author should have been emphasizing to start with and returning to throughout the book, yet she doesn't really get around to it until Chapter 14. The simple fact of the matter is that, although the 6 [or 9] may not have been, and may not be, very good Americans, they would not have been criminals under our laws of 50 years ago. They didn't actually DO anything to harm other Americans or their property. They would have had the same standing under previous American law as those people who were members of the German American Bund [or Henry Ford] before WWII [disgusting people, but not people we want littering our jails for their stupid views] But somehow the author seems "fuzzy" about this very basic point until nearly the end of her book.

So my evaluation is simple: Buy this book if you want somewhat disjointed sketches of the lives and some of the surroundings of the 6, with little more. Don't buy it if you are looking for a case study of this incident to accompany the many fine more theoretical studies of the loss of our civil liberties. You might borrow it from a friend and read Chapter 14, but if you are a civil libertarian there is not a lot more in the book to interest you.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Solid, but wanting in some ways, July 16, 2008

By 

S. J. Snyder "De gustibus non disputandum" (Various, United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Jihad Next Door: The Lackawanna Six and Rough Justice in an Age of Terror (Hardcover)

I was on the 3-4 star borderline with this, and ultimately went down a star for two reasons. One is that enough people will 4- or 5-star it anyway. The other, more importantly, is that given Temple-Raston's background and experience, she could have done more.

One main thing lacking? More conversation with the group's lawyers. T-R never even names the lawyer for Faysal Galab, the first of the Six to plead, despite the Six's lawyers' pledge not to cut separate deals.

Second, the "ideological detonators" chapter was only loosely connected with the rest of the book; and, it was too short to go into enough depth on this issue.

Above all (and there may be government restrictions on this), interviews with the Six themselves are skimpy. But, if T-R couldn't interview them, she could have talked more with the families.

Or, what about Needham? Or somebody off the record out of the Buffalo FBI office? Or a retired agent from that office?

If you're going to write about the "detonators," anyway, you should, I would think, do more analysis of effective or ineffective FBI tactics are.

Part of me feels like reviewer B. Colson, too; continuity was sometimes hard to come by in the book.

The book does do a decent background setting of Lackawanna itself, as well as with Yemen.

In short, this is probably a good starter book about the anomie of second- or third-generation immigrant Muslim-Americans, but only a starter book.

5.0 out of 5 stars Valuable resource, March 3, 2010

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L. Morgan - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Jihad Next Door: The Lackawanna Six and Rough Justice in an Age of Terror (Hardcover)

I found this book to be a valuable resource on the Lackawanna 6 and homegrown terrorism in general. Temple-Raston went to great lengths to tell this story in a reliable and factual way. I felt that her writing was very objective - she was not overly sympathetic, nor did she make the Lackawanna 6 out to be monsters. Her careful citations of facts were appreciated. With that being said, this was not a dry read like so many books that get bogged down by the facts and citations. The writing and storytelling was immaculate - I could not put this book down and kept wanting to know more. A must-read for anyone wanting to understand the phenomenon of homegrown terrorism.