The Legacy of Jihad

Hans Jansen wrote in Middle East Quarterly that the "book amply documents the systematic and destructive character of Islamic jihad, refuting the much-repeated argument that jihad is a 'rich' concept that has many meanings and that jihad first of all signifies 'inner struggle.' Jihad is first of all war, bloodshed, subjugation, and expansion of the faith by violence."^[1]

Dean Barnett wrote in The Weekly Standard that the book "is likely to be controversial because it traces a history that polite society often seems unwilling to discuss," while noting that it is "a thorough work; hardly an act of offensive jihad in the last 1,300 years has escaped Bostom's scholarship."^[2]

In The Jerusalem Post, Raphael Israeli wrote that Bostom "deserves credit for this first huge step, to be followed by others. At any rate, this is one of those books with a long shelf-life, because whatever further investigation and interpretation is done, it will stand alone as the impressive accomplishment of an autodidact layman, which many specialists have reasons to envy."^[3]

• Heritage Foundation presentation by Andrew G. Bostom^[unfit]