Faith At War

Yaroslav Trofimov, who had previously worked as a reporter in the Middle East, returned to the region two days after the September 11 attack on America. He spent the following three years crisscrossing the Islamic world, from the rebel badlands of Africa's Ivory Coast to the Taliban-infested mountains of southern Afghanistan. A speaker of Arabic, he penetrated the deepest corners of war-torn Arab lands, trekking in southern Lebanon with Hezbollah's militiamen and finding himself stuck in a roomful of anti- American insurgents in Iraq's Sunni Triangle. Mingling with ordinary Muslims, prominent clerics, and heads of state alike, Trofimov paints a ground-level picture of the Islamic world as it is being changed by America's war on terror and by a Western onslaught that's without precedent since colonial times. The Muslim countries and regions through which Trofimov travels, from Kosovo to Kuwait and Kenya to Kandahar, reveal the pitfalls of trying to revamp a civilization that's so misunderstood, and that often sees only the worst in our intentions. A subtle and provocative portrait of a critical period in Muslim history, FAITH AT WAR introduces the hidden relationships and often surprising connections that link the Islamic world to our own.