Jihad Joe : Americans who go to war in the name of Islam (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit see section history

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Characters/People edit see section history

• Anwar Awlaki: An American of Yemeni descent, Anwar Awlaki was born in New Mexico and raised in Yemen. Possessed of great personal charisma and speaking flawless English, he returned to the United States as an adult and became one of the Western world's most popular and influential Muslim preachers. But behind his often-inspiring public rhetoric, Awlaki had a profoundly dark side – patronizing prostitutes one moment and aiding Islamic extremists the next. In 2000 and 2001, he provided help and spiritual advice to some of the Al Qaeda members who would carry out the September 11 attacks. Since then, he has inspired dozens of terrorists to plan and carry out attacks against the United States, including the Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan. Today, Awlaki lives in Yemen where he publishes propaganda for Al Qaeda and plays a direct role in terrorist attacks against his former countrymen. President Obama has authorized the CIA to assassinate Awlaki using any available means, the first time an American citizen has been so targeted.
• Abdullah Rashid: An African-American convert to Islam with the "gift of gab," Rashid was a medical technician who volunteered to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan during the late 1980s. He almost lost his leg after stepping on a land mine. Returning to the United States, he become a motivational speaker for jihad, which became his growing obsession. During the 1990s, he was drawn into a scheme to recruit U.S. military veterans and others to fight in Bosnia. But his desire to help Muslims overseas soon led him into the murky depths of a terrorist plot to kill thousands of people in synchronized bombings all over New York City. An FBI informant exposed the bomb plot before it could be completed. Rashid and a dozen others found themselves serving long sentences in federal prison. Rashid e-mailed the author from his cell for this book. The author interviewed his wife on several occasions and visited her at their Brooklyn home.
• Randall Royer: Randy Royer was as a middle-class white kid from Saint Louis, who grew up in a progressive home with loving parents and played in a rock band as a teen. After spiritual exploration during his college years, he converted to Islam. Moved by stories of suffering Muslims in Bosnia, he volunteered for war and fought the Serbs alongside mujahideen from around the world. When he returned to the United States, he became a civil rights advocate for Muslims. But he craved a different role, and eventually traveled to Kashmir to work for Lashkar-E-Tayyiba, the jihadist group responsible for the 2008 massacre at the Taj Mahal hotel in Mumbai. After September 11, he trained a group of American jihadist recruits for battle, but the FBI arrested the cell's members before they could put their training to use. Royer was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
• Adam Gadahn: An American Jew who grew up on a California goat farm and listened to heavy metal music, Gadahn converted to Islam in the late 1990s. He came under the influence of Caliornia-based radicals, moved to Afghanistan and joined Al Qaeda. Now known as Azzam the American, Gadahn has revolutionized the terrorist network's media operations after September 11, producing high tech video communiqués from Osama bin Laden and Ayman Al Zawahiri and becoming a top spokesman for Al Qaeda in his own right. He has been charged with treason and is believed to be hiding somewhere along the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
• Zachary Chesser: One of the new breed of online jihadists, Zach Chesser was a bright, popular student in Virginia who played on the football team until he converted to Islam while still in high school. Delving into the dark world of online radicalism, Chesser set off a media firestorm in 2010 when he threatened the creators of South Park with death for depicting the Prophet Mohammed in a cartoon. Chesser was a prolific jihad theorist who created a ubiquitous online persona, but after repeatedly failing to transform his rhetoric into action, he was arrested after trying to flee the country for Somalia. He pleaded guilty to material support for terrorism and will spend at least the next 20 years in prison.
• Omar Hammami: Also known as Abu Mansour Al Amriki, this Alabama native today fights in Somalia with the Al Shabab militia and occasionally releases rap songs praising jihad on the Internet.

Organizations edit see section history

• Al Qaeda: Global terrorist organization led by Osama bin Laden. Many of its most important members have been Americans.

First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. J. M. Berger (Author)

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
• Dewey: 363.3250973

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Religion & Spirituality › Christianity › Theology
• Books › Nonfiction › Current Events › Terrorism
• Books › Religion & Spirituality › Islam
• Books › Nonfiction › Politics

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

• Jihad Joe: Includes links and videos featuring some of the jihadists profiled in the book.
• Intelwire.com: Many documents featured in the book can be found on the author's Web site, Intelwire.
• New York Times Review of Jihad Joe: At a time when some politicians and pundits blur the line between Islam and terrorism, Berger, who knows this subject far better than the demagogues, sharply cautions against vilifying Muslim Americans. "Extreme and indiscriminate anti-Muslim rhetoric helps to validate the worldview of our enemies -- the premise that America's wars are indeed wars against Islam," Berger writes. "You cannot tell someone, 'You are my enemy,' and then blame them for believing you."It is a timely warning from an expert who has not lost his ­perspective.
• Zenpundit Review of Jihad Joe: Berger's work is detail-packed and focused, and a useful resource for that reason alone. But it is also and specifically the work of someone who has read and talked with and listened to the people he is writing about, and his work carries their voices embedded in his own commentary. It thus joins such works as Jessica Stern's Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill and Mark Juergensmeyer's similarly named and similarly excellent Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence. <...>Berger neither condemns nor excuses: he sees, he asks, he researches, he reports. His observations of the current situation can thus be trusted to be driven by insight rather than ideology -- not the most common of stances, but one we very much need. <...>Berger's is a book to read, certainly -- and more significantly perhaps, a book to admire.

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