A renowned authority on Islamic movements, François Burgat lived for eighteen years in the Arab world, including his time as director of the French Center for Archaeology and Social Sciences at Yemen. He also dedicated many months to fieldwork in North Africa. Bringing Burgat's decades of expertise to the complex dialogues that have marked the post-9/11 world, Islamism in the Shadow of al-Qaeda delivers much-needed clarity and historical perspective.

In Burgat's eyes, most of the West's political and media rhetoric has only fueled al-Qaeda's case, revealing a woeful lack of comprehension regarding the violent authoritarianism that divides the Middle East and creates a breeding ground for terrorism. Islamism in the Shadow of al-Qaeda provides a primer of the three eras of political Islam, from the 1928 founding of the Muslim Brothers to the rise of post-colonial dictatorships and the current radicalization of "Generation al-Qaeda." Offering a new roadmap for stability, Burgat bridges the ideologies—political, religious, and cultural—that must be traversed if the deadly sectarianism is to be superseded.

François Burgat is Director of Research at the National Center for Scientific Research in France and teaches political science at the Institute for Research on the Arab and Muslim World. His many previous books include The Islamic Movement in North Africa, with William Dowell.

• Translator's Note and Acknowledgments
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. The Identity Matrix of "Muslim-Speak"
• 2. From National Struggle to the Disillusionments of "Recolonization": The Triple Temporality of Islamism
• 3. The Islamist Field between National Specificity and Transnationalization
• 4. Red Sea Secrets or Islamism without Colonization
• 5. The Brothers and the Salafis: Between Modernization and Literalism, with or without Radicalization
• 6. Islamic Radicalization: Between Religious Sectarianism and Political Counterviolence
• 7. From Sayyid Qutb to Mohammed Atta: Sectarianism or Political Counterviolence?
• 8. From Fears Inherited to Fears Exploited: The War of Representations
• 9. Hard Power and Imposed Reform: The Illusions of the Western Response to Islamism
• Conclusion: Against Terrorism—the Absolute Weapon?
• Appendix: The Islamists as Seen by the West in 1992
• Notes
• Index