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Al Qaeda in Its Own Words. Edited by Gilles Kepel and Jean-Pierre Milelli. Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2008. 363 pp., $27.95 ($17.95, paper).
Al Qaeda in Its Own Words provides the translated writings of four jihadis - Abdullah Azzam, Osama bin Laden, Ayman Zawahiri, and Abu Musab Zarqawi. Edited by five people with Kepel, a French sociologist of Islam, as lead editor, it contains a wealth of data that, unfortunately, is presented in a rather confused manner.
The actual words of AI-Qaeda are rarely analyzed or placed in context. Obvious contradictions - such as Al-Qaeda's constant protestations to Americans that its war on them is a response to and derives from U.S. foreign policy while telling Muslims that the jihad must persevere until the globe...