Product Description

Gilles Kepel takes us into the world of the students, professionals, workers, and unemployed who are caught up in the Islamic movements of Egypt. Events that have riveted world attention--the first World Trade Center bombing, assassinations in Beirut, the attempt on the life of the Pope, the assassination of Sadat, and, in a new preface, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001--are illuminated by this penetrating study.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1760890 in Books
• Published on: 2003-05-01
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .1 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 296 pages

From Library Journal
Within the past decade, a wave of religious fundamentalism has surged through the Islamic world. With the assassination of President Anwar Sadat as a focal point, Kepel examines the ideologies and activities of several Egyptian fundamentalist groups over 30 years. He describes the small but devoted religious groups determined to replace their barbaric regime with a government devoted to the true principles of Islam. The fervor of the Islamic revolutionaries, however, was equalled by their political naivete, and their success in killing Egypt's president led only to arrests and continued powerlessness. Although sympathetic to their religious concerns, Kepel asserts that most of the zealots were motivated more by the hopelessness and poverty of Egyptian life than by a desire to replace a modernist regime with pure Islam. A reliable, scholarly study of an important phenomenon. Elizabeth R. Hayford, President, Assoc. Colls. of the Midwest, Chicago
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Shaul Bakhash, New York Review of Books
"Broadly conceived and incisive."

Don Peretz, The Annals
"An intelligent, sympathetic, but critical survey of the more important Muslim fundamentalist movements, leaderships, and ideologies in Egypt today."