Militant Islamists: terrorists without frontiers

Abstract

In this book, Alaolmolki, an expert on the transnational politics of Central Asia and the Persian Gulf, provides a global view of militant Islamist ideologies, activities, and connections. Unlike many extant books on this topic, Militant Islamists does not examine only one particular factor or driving force in political violence such as suicide bombings; rather, this work studies transnational militant Islam on several levels: domestic (e.g., the role of poverty and lack of democracy in Arab and Muslim nations); regional (e.g., the Palestinian-Israeli conflict; Hizbullah in Lebanon; Jemmah Islamiyan in Southeast Asia; Hizb al-Tahrir in Central Asia); global (e.g., the role of the United States and Western Europe in inadvertently helping transnational Islamists). Ultimately, the author traces the effects of the U.S.-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq on militant Islamist terrorism, concluding that militant Islam is spreading, not receding, and that the United States would better rely on soft, rather than hard (military), power to overcome it.