Richard Landes
It is an unnecessary tragedy that Westerners had to wait almost twenty years to find out what’s going on in the minds of the people who have targeted them and their infidel societies for destruction. After almost two decades since 9-11 of westsplaining about global Jihadis and their uses of terror (dying to win, desperation), we begin to see studies that listen to what the Jihadis say and treat them as serious agents in their own right. Such studies inevitably report the prominence of their millennial dreams (global Caliphate) in apocalyptic action (now, this generation). Indeed, were one so inclined, one might suggest that the remarkable strengthening of global Jihad in the 21st century, has been in no small part due to Western researchers inability to conceive of Muslim apocalyptic passions and their capacity for ferocious violence, their enduring ability to recruit.
Among the recent crop of books on this topic, none compares with Bronislav Ostřanský’sThe Jihadist Preachers of the End Times for its scope, conceptual sophistication, thorough empirical research, and penetrating analysis. If you are in religious studies, history, political analysis, security… or if you just want to expand your understanding of human belief and action beyond the straight-jackets of post-colonial political correctness, read this book.
