Hot Off the Presses

The Jihadis’ Path to Self-Destruction

By Nelly Lahoud, Associate, Initiative on Religion in International Affairs/International Security Program; Columbia University Press; November 2010

Jihadi ideologues mobilize Muslims, especially young Muslims, through an individualist, centered Islam. Appealing to a classical defense doctrine, they argue that the mandates of jihad are the individual duty of every Muslim and therefore transcend and undermine both the authority of the state and the power of parental control.

Yet emphasizing the duty and right of individually initiated jihad is just one side of do-it-yourself Islam. The other involves protecting the purity of doctrinal beliefs against deviation, even by fellow jihadis. The pursuit of doctrinal purity has led some jihadis to resort to takfir, a pronouncement that declares fellow Muslims unbelievers and makes it legal to shed their blood. Set against the background of the Kharijites, Islam’s first counter-establishment movement, this book explores the religious philosophy underlying jihadism. The Kharijites’s idealistic and individualistic ideology forces members to deploy takfir against one another, thus hastening their extinction as a group.

“The Jihadis’ Path to Self-Destruction is written with verve and insight, skillfully integrating past and present, and primary and secondary sources. It offers marvelous insight into the jihadi mindset—its devastating simplicity and the complexities and contradictions out of which it has evolved and which may also lead to the movement’s self-destruction.” — A. H. Johns, College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University

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Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and What to Do About It

By Richard A. Clarke, Faculty Affiliate, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and Robert K. Knake; Ecco/HarperCollins; April 2010

Cyber War is a powerful book about technology, government, and military strategy; about criminals, spies, soldiers, and hackers. This is the first book about the war of the future—cyber war—and a convincing argument that we may already be in peril of losing it.

“In these pages Mr. Clarke uses his insider’s knowledge of national security policy to create a harrowing—and persuasive—picture of the cyberthreat the United States faces today.”
— Michiko Kakutani, New York Times