I read Mohamed Sifaoui's INSIDE AL QAEDA a while ago, and was reminded of it again by Will Marshall's call for more "Kremlinologists" of Jihad. Certainly Mohamed Sifaoui is as much of an expert as anyone alive--and I hope Will Marshall reads this book. Here's an excerpt from the foreword:
I am an Algerian Muslim by birth, and a journalist by profession. Like everyone else in Algeria, I had lived with teh scourge of Islamist terrorism for a decade before the western world discovered the horror of 11 September 2001. Like may of my fellow Algerians, I have lost many people close to me, both family and firends. Such traumas have left indelible marks which will never heal.
In Algeria we have lived through this turmoil without the sympathy of the international community. To put it bluntly, the West didn't really care about terrorism until it came knocking at its own door I have never experienced the solidarity shown by the Europeans towards the Americans, for example, in the aftermath of the attacks on Washington and New York. On 11 September, I understoot something very important: no matter what anyone says, and despite the views that continually get repeated, in the West, the life of an Algerian isn't valued as highly as the life of an American, and a Rwandan life isn't worth as much as a European one.
Nonetheless, realizing this has not stopped me carrying on my fight against Islamism, since I do not want to see it strike France and thereaten the security of the coutnry which has welcomed me, and which has become mine. I have neer given up the fight, even though there are certain sectors of public opinion here in France which continue tolook the other way, and make a distinction between 'moderate' Islamism and 'radical' fundamentalism, often excusing en passant the crimes committed in the name of this form of fascism all around the world, not least in Algeria. Along with thousands of others worldwide, I have continued to denounce Islamism as the ideology which feeds a despicable form of terrorism, and which threatens whole societies from the Philippines to Chechnya, and from the Near East to the Horn of Africa. All the while, bomb attacks continue with terrible regularity.
To buy INSIDE AL QAEDA, click here:
