Sun, 17 Feb 2008

Children of Jihad: A Young American's Travels Among the Youth of the Middle East

I normally don't write a review of a book until I've finished it (which means I hardly ever write book reviews, because I've been so bad at finishing books lately), but I really wanted to post about how much I am enjoying Jared Cohen's Children of Jihad. While its subtitle, A Young American's Travels Among the Youth of the Middle East, sums up the book's subject nicely, it doesn't convey how truly insightful the book is. Cohen gained this insight by doing a seemingly simple thing: he listened to people. He sat with them, ate with them, and listened as they told him about their lives, their dreams, their aspirations, their problems. By doing this, he gained a much more complete, coherent picture of the Middle East than any of number of "political analysts" or cultural experts. This is a great book if you want to understand more about the true plight of people in the Muslim world. I'll write a more complete review when I finish the book.

Update: I've finished Children of Jihad, and I have to say my opinion hasn't changed; it's excellent. If you've ever asked yourself how millions of people in the Middle East can hate the entire Western world, this book reveals the truth: they don't. Cohen knows this because he went to the Middle East and talked to them. Even when some groups have grievances with America, they most often were with the US government and US policy than with Americans themselves. (Let's face it: who doesn't have a beef with the US government right now?) Based on Cohen's travels, the problem mostly lies with that small minority of people that do hate the West as a collective, for various reasons. Unfortunately, in several countries those hardline "Death to America" people are in control of their governments, keeping a stranglehold on power and thus being the most visible people in the news media. Not that "the media" is the sole reason for the distorted view that the Middle East and the West have of each other, but doesn't seem to have helped matters much. Reading Children of Jihad definitely gave me a better perspective on the Middle East and its people. Most importantly, it gave me this perspective by using the best source of all: the people themselves.

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