 First edition | |
| Author | Peter Bergen |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Political |
| Publisher | Crown Publishing Group |
Publication date | February 2, 2016 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | |
| ISBN | 978-0-8041-3954-0 |
United States of Jihad is a 2016 book by Peter Bergen. It chronicles various case studies of jihadist terrorism within the United States. The book served as the basis for a 2016 HBO documentary, Homegrown: The Counter-Terror Dilemma. [1]
Peter Bergen's United States of Jihad provides an authoritative overview of one of the most discussed—yet misunderstood—topics: jihadist terrorism in the United States. As Bergen notes in Jihad, some 360 Americans have been charged with jihadist terrorism crimes in the US since the September 11 attacks. As a result of those attacks, public opinion has, at times, viewed terrorism as an existential threat to the US.
One of the standout points in Jihad is: of the 360 people who have been prosecuted for jihadist terrorism offenses since 9/11, an overwhelming 80% were US persons- meaning that they were either citizens or legal permanent residents of the United States at the time. This stands in stark contrast to the presumption by some that persons of the Islamic faith who originate from outside the US are the primary jihadist threat. Indeed, as Bergen shows, Americans like Anwar al-Awlaki, Adam Gadahn, Omar Hammami, and David Headley have had prominent roles in foreign terrorist organizations. Awlaki's radical sermons have been directly tied to nearly a quarter of American jihadist cases, Bergen says. Additionally, a number of American Muslims have chosen to leave, or have attempted to leave, the US in order to join a foreign terrorist organization. Others have provided financial support to these groups.
Bergen's examination of American jihadists finds that they are largely middle class and typically well educated. Some, like Major Nidal Hasan, would grow up with the quintessential American lifestyle, before experiencing a "cognitive opening" that turned them towards militant Islam. Bergen finds that in Hasan's case, it was the deaths of his parents that provided this opening, as their deaths caused him to become more pious. This in turn ultimately led to Hasan's deadly 2009 assault at Fort Hood, Texas.
On another front, Bergen shows how the greatest menace to the US homeland is posed, not by centralized groups like Al-Qaeda and ISIS, but rather by lone wolf attackers, such as the Tsarnaev brothers, whose terrorist attacks in 2013 paralyzed Boston's residents with fear. These jihadists visit terrorist websites and learn how to carry out attacks in the US. As social media and encrypted chat applications continue to grow, recruiters take full advantage of their anonymity and continue to seek out more recruits for further attacks. Their decentralized operations are difficult, if not impossible, for the authorities to stop, and the terrorist organizations are aware of this. Despite the massive surveillance efforts on the part of the intelligence community, Bergen finds that in the cases of the 360 individuals he examined for Jihad, "surveillance of American phone data had no discernible role in preventing acts of terrorism and only a marginal role in preventing terrorist-related activity, such as fund-raising."
United States of Jihad has been well-received, with former Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano declaring that "Bergen's book is the best one-volume treatment available on the current state of jihad in America." [2] Michiko Kakutani writes that Bergen's "profiles of jihadists . . . leave the reader with a harrowing appreciation of the banality of evil and an unnerving sense of missteps made by the authorities" and "Mr. Bergen's detailed accounts of terror plots (both executed, foiled or failed) make for chilling reading." [3]
Walter Mead states Bergen has written "what in effect are two books about terrorism. One is a riveting thoroughly-researched account of the evolving state of the threat as a growing number of American citizens join the ranks of foreign terrorist movements . . . The other is a skilled defense of the Obama administration's anti-terror effort." [4] Zach Dorfman, of the Los Angeles Times, believes that "Bergen takes a generally skeptical view of the growth of the post-9/11 national security state and of the fear-mongering about Islam that has increasingly transfixed the darker crannies of American politics." [5]
Al Jazeera's Jenifer Fenton found that Jihad offers "sobering reading in a feverish U.S. political climate." [6] Other reviewers, like Mary Louise Kelly with The Washington Post, have stated that they would like to see more discussion, namely because "the prescriptive sections are among the weakest of the book" and Bergen's discussion of the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit was "long and not particularly compelling." [7]
Writing for The Boston Globe, Rayyan Al-Shawaf calls Bergen's work, "engrossing and edifying." Al-Shawaf also credits Bergen for not overstating the threat posed by jihadist terrorism while simultaneously "recognizing the potential of secular Muslims . . . [who] are particularly well-positioned to allay ordinary Americans' sometimes indiscriminate suspicion of Islam's adherents, as well as provide their (numerically few) alienated coreligionists with a model [for rejecting radicalization]." [8] Jason Burke at Literary Review believes that Bergen's work "is a rigorous, balanced, clear-eyed and perceptive overview of violent Islamic extremism in the USA." [9]
Al-Qaeda is a pan-Islamist militant organization led by Sunni Jihadists who self-identify as a vanguard spearheading a global Islamist revolution to unite the Muslim world under a supra-national Islamic caliphate. Its membership is mostly composed of Arabs, but also includes people from other ethnic groups. Al-Qaeda has mounted attacks on civilian, economic and military targets of the US and its allies; such as the 1998 US embassy bombings, the USS Cole bombing and the September 11 attacks. The organization is designated as a terrorist group by NATO, the UN Security Council, the European Union, and various countries around the world.
The Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) is a Uyghur Islamic extremist organization founded in Pakistan by Hasan Mahsum. Its stated goals are to establish an Islamic state in Xinjiang and Central Asia.
Islamic terrorism refers to terrorist acts with religious motivations carried out by fundamentalist militant Islamists and Islamic extremists.
Peter Lampert Bergen is an American journalist, author, and producer who is CNN's national security analyst, a vice president at New America, a professor at Arizona State University, and the host of the Audible podcast In the Room with Peter Bergen.
Anwar Nasser Abdulla al-Awlaki was an American-Yemeni lecturer, and jihadist who was killed in 2011 in Yemen by a U.S. government drone strike ordered by President Barack Obama. Al-Awlaki became the first U.S. citizen to be targeted and killed by a drone strike from the U.S. government. U.S. government officials have stated that al-Awlaki was a key organizer for the Islamist terrorist group al-Qaeda.
Jihadism is a neologism for militant Islamic movements that are perceived as existentially threatening to the West. It is a form of religious violence and has been applied to various insurgent Islamic extremist, militant Islamist, and terrorist individuals and organizations whose ideologies are based on the Islamic notion of lesser jihad from the classical interpretation of Islam. It has also been applied to various Islamic empires in history, such as the Rashidun and Umayyad caliphates of the early Muslim conquests, and the Ottoman Empire, who extensively campaigned against non-Muslim nations in the name of jihad.
Islamic extremism, Islamist extremism or radical Islam refers a set of extremist beliefs, behaviors and ideology within Islam. These terms remain contentious, encompassing a spectrum of definitions, ranging from academic interpretations to the notion that all ideologies other than Islam have failed and are inferior. Furthermore, these terms may extend to encompass other sects of Islam that do not share such extremist views.
Evan F. Kohlmann is an American terrorism consultant who has worked for the FBI and other governmental organizations.
Rita Katz is a terrorism analyst and the co-founder of the Search International Terrorist Entities (SITE) Intelligence Group, a private intelligence firm based in Washington, D.C.
Terrorism in the United Kingdom, according to the Home Office, poses a significant threat to the state. There have been various causes of terrorism in the UK. Before the 2000s, most attacks were linked to the Northern Ireland conflict. In the late 20th century there were also attacks by Islamic terrorist groups. Since 1970, there have been at least 3,395 terrorist-related deaths in the UK, the highest in western Europe. The vast majority of the deaths were linked to the Northern Ireland conflict and happened in Northern Ireland. In mainland Great Britain, there were 430 terrorist-related deaths between 1971 and 2001. Of these, 125 deaths were linked to the Northern Ireland conflict, and 305 deaths were linked to other causes, including 270 in the Lockerbie bombing. Since 2001, there have been almost 100 terrorist-related deaths in Great Britain.
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab popularly referred to as the "Underwear Bomber" or "Christmas Bomber", is a Nigerian terrorist who, at the age of 23, attempted to detonate plastic explosives hidden in his underwear while on board Northwest Airlines Flight 253, en route from Amsterdam to Detroit, Michigan, US on 25 December 2009.
On June 5, 2010, in a covert American anti-terrorism operation named "Operation Arabian Knight", two American citizens Mohamed Mahmood Alessa and Carlos "Omar" Eduardo Almonte, New Jersey residents, were arrested at Kennedy International Airport in New York City. The men were in the process of boarding booked, separate flights to Egypt. According to the affidavit filed in support of the federal criminal complaint, they planned to travel to Somalia to join Al-Shabab, an Al Qaeda-linked terrorist group recruiting foreigners for its civil war. They intended to join them in killing American troops in Somalia, although few Americans are stationed there. The two men were charged with conspiring to kill, maim, and kidnap people outside the U.S.
Anwar al-Awlaki was an American-Yemeni cleric killed in late 2011, who was identified in 2009 by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as a known, important "senior recruiter for al Qaeda", and a spiritual motivator.
Inspire is an English-language online magazine published by the organization al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). The magazine is one of the many ways AQAP uses the Internet to reach its audience. Numerous international and domestic extremists motivated by radical interpretations of Islam have been influenced by the magazine and, in some cases, used its bomb-making instructions in their attempts to carry out attacks. The magazine is an important brand-building tool, not just of AQAP, but of all al-Qaeda branches, franchises and affiliates.
Zachary Adam Chesser is an American convicted in 2010 for aiding al-Shabaab, a Somalia-based terrorist group aligned with al-Qaeda, which has been designated an terrorist organization by the U.S. government. On February 24, 2011, after pleading guilty, Chesser was sentenced in federal court to 25 years in prison. He is also known for his alleged threats to South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone for their depictions of Muhammad in an episode of that series.
Jihadi tourism, also referred to as jihad tourism or jihadist tourism, is a term sometimes used to describe travel to foreign destinations with the object of scouting for terrorist training. US diplomatic cables leaked in 2010 have raised concerns about this form of travel. Within intelligence circles, the term is also sometimes applied dismissively to travellers who are assumed to be seeking contact with extremist groups mainly out of curiosity.
Samir ibn Zafar Khan was a Saudi Arabian naturalized U.S. citizen, terrorist, and the editor and publisher of Inspire magazine, an English-language online magazine reported to be published by the Islamic terrorist group al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). He was killed in a drone strike in Yemen together with Anwar al-Awlaki.
Islamic extremism in the United States comprises all forms of Islamic extremism occurring within the United States. Islamic extremism is an adherence to fundamentalist interpretations of Islam, potentially including the promotion of violence to achieve political goals. In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, Islamic extremism became a prioritized national security concern of the U.S. government and a focus of many subsidiary security and law enforcement entities. Initially, the focus of concern was on foreign Islamic terrorist organizations, particularly al-Qaeda, but in the course of the years since the September 11 terror attacks, the focus has shifted more towards Islamic extremist radicalized individuals and jihadist networks within the United States.
Domestic terrorism or homegrown terrorism is a form of terrorism in which victims "within a country are targeted by a perpetrator with the same citizenship" as the victims. There are various different definitions of terrorism, with no universal agreement about it.