Reviews for A Portrait of Egypt: A Journey through the World of Militant Islam

The average rating for A Portrait of Egypt: A Journey through the World of Militant Islam based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-03-06 00:00:00 Darren Cherwonuk لقراءة ملخص عن الكتاب... أضغط على الرابط التالي for a brief of the book in Arabic... please click on the link below...

Review # 2 was written on 2011-07-22 00:00:00 Arash Ng The author ' a staff writer for The New Yorker ' summarizes her expriences in Egypt since 1977, and shares what she has learned from interviews with key individuals involved with late-20th-century developments in the Middle East. Her mildly confrontative interviews with individuals the rest of the media are simply satisfied to dismiss as evil, would have been sufficient to make this read worthwhile, but Weaver goes way beyond that in her descriptions of everyday life, religion, and politics of modern Egypt, and how they are all connected to security concerns in America. Her analysis of recent Egyptian history obviates our media's incompleteness and simplification of events there. This book was published after the trials following the first attack on the World Trade Center, but before the 9/11 attack, and provides an interesting snapshot of what was known at that time about militant Islamists. A surprising revelation to me was that the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan was probably less significant for its Cold War implications, than for the subsequent influence of the religious fanatics recruited, funded, trained, and armed for the covert American action in that region - and then abandonned. This book came to my list from the "Bibliography" in Steve Coll's Ghost Wars and was seconded by Nancy Pearl's Book Lust recommendations for "The Islamic World".