The rise and fall of Al-Qaeda

Gerges argues that Al-Qaeda has degenerated into a fractured, marginal body kept alive largely by the self-serving anti-terrorist bureaucracy it helped to spawn. He argues that the Western powers have become mired in a 'terrorism narrative', stemming from the mistaken belief that America is in danger of a devastating attack by a crippled al-Qaeda. To explain why it is no longer a threat, he provides a history of the organisation, showing its emergence from the disintegrating local jihadist movements of the mid-1990s in a desperate effort to rescue a sinking ship by altering its course

Gerges argues that Al-Qaeda has degenerated into a fractured, marginal body kept alive largely by the self-serving anti-terrorist bureaucracy it helped to spawn. He argues that the Western powers have become mired in a 'terrorism narrative', stemming from the mistaken belief that America is in danger of a devastating attack by a crippled al-Qaeda. To explain why it is no longer a threat, he provides a history of the organisation, showing its emergence from the disintegrating local jihadist movements of the mid-1990s in a desperate effort to rescue a sinking ship by altering its course.

In this concise and fascinating book, Fawaz A. Gerges argues that Al-Qaeda has degenerated into a fractured, marginal body kept alive largely by the self-serving anti-terrorist bureaucracy it helped to spawn. In The Rise and Fall of Al-Qaeda, Gerges, a leading authority on radical ideologies and Muslim extremism, argues that the Western powers have become mired in a "terrorism narrative," stemming from the mistaken belief that America is in danger of a devastating attack by a crippled Al-Qaeda. To explain why Al-Qaeda is no longer a threat, he provides a briskly written history of th