The attacks of September 11, 2001, were a calamity on a scale few had imagined possible. In their aftermath, we exaggerated the men who perpetrated the attacks, shaping hasty and often mistaken reporting into caricatures we could comprehend -- monsters and master criminals equal to the enormity of their crime. In reality, the 9/11 hijackers were unexceptional men, not much different from countless others. It is this ordinary enemy, not the caricature, that we must understand if we are to have a legitimate hope of defeating terrorism.

Using research undertaken in twenty countries on...

Based on extensive fieldwork, this study looks into the meanings of the headscarf among lower middle class women in Turkey. The book explains how the connotations of Islamic identity attached to the headscarf unfold in the context of insecure, low status retail employment.

..". Will] have an impact on two important fields of scholarship: social movement theory and the study of Islamic activist movements." --John Voll, Georgetown University

This volume represents the first comprehensive attempt to incorporate the study of Islamic activism into social movement theory. It argues that the dynamics, processes, and organization of Islamic activism can be understood as important elements of contention that transcend the specificity of "Islam" as a system of meaning and identity and a basis for collective action. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, the...

In the eyes of many Westerners, Muslim women are hidden behind a veil of negative stereotypes that portray them as either oppressed, subservient wives and daughters or, more recently, as potential terrorists. Yet many Muslim women defy these stereotypes by taking active roles in their families and communities and working to create a more just society. This book introduces eighteen Muslim women activists from the United States and Canada who have worked in fields from social services, to marital counseling, to political advocacy in order to further social justice within the Muslim community...

Many Westerners view Islam as a religion that restricts and subordinates women in both private and public life. Yet a surprising number of women in Western Europe and America are converting to Islam. What attracts these women to a belief system that is markedly different from both Western Christianity and Western secularism? What benefits do they gain by converting, and what are the costs? How do Western women converts live their new Islamic faith, and how does their conversion affect their families and communities? How do women converts transmit Islamic values to their children? These are...

A Washington Post Book World Rave for 2005

In the aftermath of 9/11, Yaroslav Trofimov spent three years crisscrossing the Islamic world to create this unprecedented report. Mingling with ordinary Muslims, prominent clerics, and heads of state alike, he paints a ground-level picture of Islamic life as it is being changed by the Western war on terror. A sensitive, provocative portrait of a critical period in Muslim history, Faith at War introduces surprising ties between the Islamic world and our own.