Global Jihad

Professor Quintan Wiktorowicz attempts to explain the motivation for the terrorist attacks of September 11. Surprisingly, Wiktorowicz does not deliver his own lecture, but Grover Gardner's reading of it sounds as if he is the teacher. In reality, however, most people find it difficult, if not impossible, to understand the events of September 11. Wiktorowicz's analysis succeeds not by making the unfathomable rational, rather by explaining how these Islamic terrorists came to acquire their views and the ways in which they rationalized even the most heinous of actions under the guise of religion. Gardner presents Wiktorowicz's essay with the authoritative voice that one expects from a professor or a trusted announcer. Gardner's presentation, like the material itself, is straight-forward and without unnecessary dramatics. D.J.S. (c) AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine