AFTER 9/11 BROUGHT RADICAL ISLAM to the country’s attention, some Americans wondered, “Why do they hate us?” Since then, many answers have been offered. But the best way to understand what drives jihadists is an examination of their own words. To that end, Professor Mary Habeck’s book Knowing the Enemy: Jihadist Ideology and the War on Terror (Yale University Press 2006) makes a vital contribution. It is the most thorough and valuable explanation of jihadist ideology available in English to date.

Central to Habeck’s argument is the failure of most Western scholarship to comprehend religion as a sociopolitical factor. Most academics, journalists and policymakers in the increasingly secular West have never considered religion an important part of their lives, and have trouble understanding how it can be a prime motivating force in world affairs. Thus, they tend to look to factors such as poverty, colonization, and imperialism to explain jihadist grievances.