Other Islamic Movements & Sects, Terrorism - General & Miscellaneous, September 11th Terrorist Attacks, 2001, General & Miscellaneous Islam, U.S. Politics & Government - 2000-Present, Politics & Islam

Sword of Islam

Name: Sword of Islam
Author: John F. Murphy, Jr.
ISBN: 9781591020103

by John F. Murphy, Jr., John Murphy

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Overview

Undoubtedly timely and full of fascinating detail, Sword of Islam is a thorough, well-researched, and revealing account of global Islamic terrorism. A military historian, John F. Murphy Jr. traces the intricate interconnections among various terrorist cells, including Osama Bin Laden's Al-Qaeda and its relationship with the Taliban of Afghanistan, the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt, Islamic Moro extremists in the Philippines, obscure Algerian terrorist groups, and other sympathetic underworld organizations in Lebanon, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Pakistan, and even South America. He also puts recent terrorist attacks in historical context by discussing such key events as the rise of Arab nationalism following Israel's victory in the 1948 war, the Black September killings of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics, the 1976 rescue at Entebbe by Israeli commandos of hostages abducted by German terrorists, the terrorist plots of the infamous "Carlos the Jackal," the bombing of the US Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, and the impact of the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the Mujahideen resistance of the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in the same year.
This book supplies the answer to the question that has been on the minds of all Americans since September 11: Why do they hate us? Murphy makes it clear that as the chief backer of Israel the United States is seen by extremists as the evil power behind the hated "Zionist enemy." But he also emphasizes that in the final analysis we are the only country with the power to bring these attacks to a halt.

About the Author, John F. Murphy, Jr.

John F. Murphy Jr. is a military historian and the founder and President of The Grenadier Company, a private research firm specializing in military history, international relations, guerilla warfare, and terrorism. He has authored two confidential reports for the CIA, has been a lecturer in European and American History at St. Joseph University and Drexel University in Philadelphia, and is a guest columnist and reporter for the Philadelphia Daily News. He is currently writing a two-volume history of the early American frontier for the University of Missouri Press.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly

This sweep of the history of Islamic extremism suffers from a lack of focus and a failure to confront complex questions. Murphy, a military historian, covers a lot of ground, beginning his story with the birth of the prophet Muhammad in A.D. 571 and ending with the Sept. 11 attacks and the U.S.-led war on terrorism in Afghanistan. But most of the book looks at the 20th century's sporadic outbreaks of anti-West violence. All too often this account feels like a list of atrocities, without interpretation and context. In just a few pages, for example, Murphy jumps from the rise of Nasser in Egypt to the creation of the Turkish state to the rule of the Shah in Iran. He doesn't delve in any depth into the conditions, whether internal or external, that led to today's Islamic militancy. In his epilogue, Murphy further fails to explore the quandary of where the U.S. campaign should go next, yet repeatedly cheers it on making his book feel like a patriotic high school history textbook. (Mar. 30) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Booknews

A military historian who has written reports for the US Central Intelligence Agency, Murphy inaugurates a multi-volume history of terrorism, of which this is the first to appear. He began in 1998, and has been revising furiously to keep up with events. Among his views is that extremist outsiders soured the good relations between the Crusaders and the Arabs. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)