Truth Jihad: My Epic Struggle Against the 9/11 Big Lie [Paperback]

Kevin Barrett (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 11, 2007

Millions of people now know the main arguments for the thesis '9/11 was an inside job', starting from the controlled demolition of the World Trade Center buildings No. 1, 2 and 7. Even a champion of orthodoxy like "Time Magazine" was obliged to note that the '9/11 Truth Movement' is no longer 'a fringe phenomenon. It is a mainstream reality'. Kevin Barrett takes this now-familiar thesis as a springboard to new territory in this book. Like Jack Kerouac in 'On the Road', Barrett has written a gospel for a new generation of post-9/11 sceptics.This ebullient book strikes a confident keynote for this sudden coming of age. It is a tonic draft of courage for millions of disenfranchised 9/11 truthers - and for the uneasy majority who sense that America, once a beacon of ideals for humanity, is no longer on the right track. "Truth Jihad" is the first '9/11 Truth' book that is not primarily tasked with proving 9/11 was an inside job to our fellow humanity, who remain blindly trapped inside the mainstream media bubble. For millions of us the facts are already painfully clear now - as is the frustration of trying to convey the harsh truth to those who aren't ready for it. This book is a sharing of that experience, and an affirmation of life and literature after 9/11 - a lively celebration of art, freedom, truth and protest.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Barrett, a Muslim convert and Islamic studies professor, is neither hysterical nor a fool, but a thoughtful, questioning and careful man whose outrage nevertheless overwhelms evidence in support of his belief that the tragic events of 9/11 "had been an obvious inside job ... and that the perpetrators are hiding in plain sight, in 'undisclosed locations' at the highest levels of the US government." Barrett brings up many intriguing points, such as the contention, central to many 9/11 conspiracy theories, that the towers fell as a result of controlled demolition, and an intriguing anecdote about the ease with which mainstream media-even French media, "three times as smart and four times as skeptical as their American counterparts"-can be duped. Though his tangents into topics such as religion, UFOs and 9/11 jokes are enlightening, and his sociological observations are often insightful-such as his take on the "new pseudo-religion of post-9/11 'patriotism,'" beget by "spectacular human sacrifice" and "mirroring the worst kind of Christian tradition, itself based on the human-sacrifice image of the Crucifixion"-he doesn't back conclusions with hard facts, directing readers to other books and Web sites to learn the "truth." Though Barrett struggles mightily to make an objective case for the government's culpability in 9/11, raising some worthy points along the way, he's preaching to the converted.
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Product Details

• Paperback: 222 pages
• Publisher: Progressive Press (April 11, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0930852990
• ISBN-13: 978-0930852993
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.1 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,361,251 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #23 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Religion & Spirituality > Religious Studies > Controversial Knowledge
  • #41 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Nonfiction > Current Events > Conspiracy Theories
  • #65 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Nonfiction > Current Events > Terrorism

More About the Author

Kevin Barrett, Ph.D., is an Arabist-Islamologist scholar and one of America's best-known critics of the War on Terror.

From 1991 through 2006 Dr. Barrett taught at colleges and universities in San Francisco, Paris and Wisconsin. In summer 2006 Dr. Barrett was attacked by a group of Republican state legislators who called for him to be fired from his job at the University of Wisconsin-Madison due to his political opinions. Since 2007 Dr. Barrett has been informally blacklisted from teaching in American colleges and universities.

Dr. Barrett ran for Congress in Wisconsin in 2008, and currently works as a nonprofit organizer, public speaker, author and talk radio host. He lives in rural western Wisconsin with his wife, two sons, and a dog named after Salman Rushdie. His website is http://www.truthjihad.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Juvenile and Narcissistic, an Embarrassment to the Truth Movement, October 6, 2009

By 

Brian Good - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Truth Jihad: My Epic Struggle Against the 9/11 Big Lie (Paperback)

Judging a book by its cover is normally poor practice, but the semiotic justice of this cover portraying the author engaging in symbolic autofellation makes such judgment apt.

Barrett fell in love with his own image on FOX TV news back in 2006 and never got over himself. The book's opening is revealing: "It was just a few days after Steve Nass had made me famous." Like we should care? "Call me Ishmael" it's not. As presidents tend to confuse maintenance of their own public image with national security, Barrett came to confuse his own self-promotion with 9/11 Truth. His incorporation of his own (presumably previously unpublished) poetry in his text suggests the author had a high degree of artistic control in this work.

The book's title, juxtaposing the word "truth" with about the most despised word in the English language, does about as much damage as any two words can do to the 9/11 Truth movement. His insistence that "jihad" means what Barrett wants it to mean (struggle and self-improvement) and not what it means to the American mainstream (religious war) reveal a solipsistic myopia that serves to marginalize truthers in proportion to the influence and attention Barrett gets. His disregard over the years for journalistic standards of accuracy and verifiability certainly shows truth to be a struggle for him, and recent interviews suggest he's losing the fight for self-improvement as well. Unfortunately, Barrett considers himself a leader of the truth movement, and the mainstream media are happy to cast him in the "Kooky Truther" story they love so well. Barrett obligingly trips himself up on facts.

For Barrett's new book, "Questioning the War on Terror", he seems to have located a publisher in his home town of 900 souls. Allah is indeed great! Such luck is surely an indicator of the book's quality. In promoting it Barrett appeared on a mainstream AM radio station that reaches half the country, revealing an amazing ignorance about the Nuremberg trials while claiming to be an expert in international law. He also characterized the holocaust as "toasting six million Jews", demonstrating a cultural insensitivity that lends credence to the suspicions of many of us that his alleged interfaith organization, the Muslim Jewish Christian Alliance, has been a sham organization--nothing more than a website--all along.

To see a video on Barrett's radio comments about the holocaust google: Kevin Barrett room

(Update: as of December, 2009, the MUJCA website has gone dead.)

6 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lays it on the line for truth in an entertaining way, July 11, 2007

By 

Brian Wright "bwisok" (Merrimack, NH USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Truth Jihad: My Epic Struggle Against the 9/11 Big Lie (Paperback)

The still diffuse 9/11 Truth Movement has been making quite an impact on public awareness over the past two or three years, with many significant works emerging. Dr. Barrett, as a writer and an organizer of seminars, ranks right up there in the pantheon of intellectually and physically courageous leaders devoting their "lives, fortunes, and sacred honor" to bringing the lies down and bringing the liars to justice.

I've covered a few 9/11 exposés in my columns and reviews; I have a particular affinity for Dave McGowan's iconoclastic/ everyman hard-headed analysis proffered from the very next day after the crime via his cleverly named Website, Center for an Informed America. In fact, Davesweb analysis is what started my serious questioning of the official story...

For my complete review of this book and for other book and movie

reviews, please visit my site [...]

Brian Wright

Copyright 2007

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Genuine religion triggers expanded consciousness, compassion and truth..., May 29, 2007

By 

Winston Fahrenheit (Austerity Strip One, Tory Britain) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Truth Jihad: My Epic Struggle Against the 9/11 Big Lie (Paperback)

Kevin Barrett has produced a short work of many parts that make up an insightful, entertaining, and thought provoking whole.

It would be difficult to summarise all the threads in this book completely but some of them are autobiographic, analytical, and educational on Arabic culture, on the interpretation and analysis of myths and legends, on the understanding of media manipulation, a post-beatniks discovery of higher meaning and calls in life.

There are a multitude of facets to this book built from many rich narratives. It is a very well written discourse and educational. The book is easy to read, and contains the prose of a literary scholar.

As Kevin says in the book, "Genuine religion triggers expanded consciousness, compassion and truth - not inculcated stupidity arrogance, dogmatism, and murderousness".