American Jihad -- Steven Emerson: A Book Review

American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us

Steven Emerson

Free Press, 2002

Of the plethora of books on terrorism crowding the sales shelves these days, there are few that do not have a blurb or two validating the credentials of the author and his right to expound on the subject therein.  But there are few who have been there and back, done the research firsthand, interviewed the subjects and the topic in depth.  In short, most are academic pieces, the points of the books couched in research of those who have investigated.  Steven Emerson is one of the investigators and his book, American Jihad, goes right for the jugular of the extremist Islamic movement -- it's finances.

American Jihad begins with Steven Emerson going into a convention hall out of curiousity in 1989 in Kansas City and stumbling on a gathering of extremist Islamic groups using the basic freedoms of expression and assembly to convert, recruit, finance, and exhort in the name of militant Islam.  It would be the beginning of a long journey that would result in a documentary, "Jihad In America", in 1994, the author's meeting key terrorist players, including Osama bin Laden, and going on to become one of America's leading (and true) experts on terrorist organizations.

And like any other large and extended organization, the loosely linked terrorist organizations of the world, and the more sophisticated al-Qaeda, need two things to survive.  Manpower and finances.  Emerson details for us how the terrorist organizations we are trying to contain and fight all over the world are being primarily funded through agencies headquartered within the United States.  Using the network of terrorists that would bomb the World Trade Center in 1993 under the guidance of Sheikh Omar Rahman, Emerson follows the money trail.  He tells how HAMAS set up and began operating.  And to top it off, he details the beginnings of a little known group of funds raisers and recruiters known as Alkhifa, operating the Alkhifa Refugee Center, also known as the Office of Services for the Mujahideen, which would give root to bin Laden's secret organization, al-Qaeda.

American Jihad is, appropriately enough, a book of jihad, of how extremists have taken a simple word that means "struggle" and twisted it to justify what they see as their holy mission, to destroy or convert infidels and all enemies of Islam to protect and extend the 'umma', or community.   And it isn't a live-and-let-live philosophy.  No, it is aggressive and protectionist, combative and territorial.  And it is being taught, disseminated, and cultivated not only around the world, but right here in the United States. 

American Jihad is a wakeup call, a virtual rude slap of truth that all Americans need to understand and appreciate.  Jihadists, extremists, are using the very laws that make the United States the great nation it is to recruit and finance operatives and operations to attack us, using our greatest strengths against us to make us weak.  American Jihad is a book of warning and we need to heed it.