Rating: 
Summary: The first of its kind.
Review: This is the first thing I have ever read from Paul Fregosi and he gained my immediate admiration, not just as a person, but as a writer who is not afraid to convey his message without mincing words. Readers will instantly notice a total lack of political correctness in Fregosi's work. Too many writers today are scared to "offend" the reader. You won't find that here. Fregosi has a message to send and he lays it right out. I'm sure many Muslims and Muslim apologists will be offended by this work, but that's okay. Let them dispute it with facts of their own.
Muslims and others of the anti-Christian crowd like to cite the Crusades as the beginning of the Jihad, but Fregosi blows that out of water by giving 1,300 years of examples of Jihad. He begins by giving the reader a look into the origins of the Islamic faith. Fregosi cuts right to the chase by exposing the Prophet Muhammad for what he truly was; a thief, a pedophile and a murderer. I get the picture of a Charles Manson with 600,000,000 followers. He goes on to expose many of the myths perpetrated by the Islamic faith, such as the Holiness of Jerusalem to the Muslims. We have been force fed to believe Jerusalem holds significant religious value to the Muslims because Muhammad spent time there. It turns out, his only time there by way of a "night walk" which appears to have been little more than a 7th century acid trip. In short, Fregosi gives us information about Islam that we will never get from the evening news.
I don't want to give the false impression that this is little more than Islam bashing, because that is not the case. Fregosi also goes out of his way to present two sides to this story. When Christians and other groups wrongly treated or abused Muslims, Fregosi is quick to point it out.
This isn't just a book about Jihad either. This book gives the reader a basic insight into much about the Arab world that is largely unknown to western culture, such as politics, in-fighting among Arabs, social trends and much more. I know of no other source where the reader can obtain so much information about the Muslim world in a single volume.
As this book has been on the market for several years now, it has been condemned by many who claim it to be a work of biased hatred. To those people I would simply ask a few true or false questions.
1) Fregosi states that Islamic Jihad against the infidels has been going on for over 1,300 years. True or False
2) In a March 1941 radio address from Berlin to the Arab countries, the Grand Mufti, al-Haj Mohamed Amin al Hussein, called on his listeners to "kill the Jews wherever you find them," for, he said, "this pleases God, history and religion." True or False
3) Islam considers itself doctrinally a religion where destiny is to dominate and rule the world. True or False
4) History gives us undisputable evidence that the Prophet Muhammad was a thief, a pedophile and a murderer. True or False
If one were able to dispute that all of these and many other statements were true, then you might be able to call this book a work of biased hatred, but they are all true statements. If detractors chose to be obtuse about the truth and be obdurate in their belief, then that is their problem, not the authors.
The cold, hard, non-politically correct truth is, the predominantly Christian west is at war with the Muslim world. That war isn't going to stop in our lifetimes. If you believe, as I do, that it is best to know your enemy, then this book is a must read. If you think the Muslim desire to destroy the infidel was brought about by recent western interference in the Middle East, then wake up and buy this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Necessary corrective to modern misconceptions.
Review: Those who hold up Christianity as a panacea must be reminded of the religion's bloody and oppressive past, which is exemplied as well in the crusades against the Muslim "heathen" as in anything else. However, there is an unfortunate trend among modern scholars to present the historical encounter between Christendom and Dar al-Islam as a completely one-sided affair, with the Muslims invariably being the hapless victims of imperialist Christians. In truth, Islam has no better a historical record than Christianity, as Paul Fregosi's JIHAD IN THE WEST demonstrates.Fregosi takes us through the history of Islamic imperialism and violence, from the time of Muhammad to the Yugoslavian civil war, showing us that Islam is no more inherently peaceful, and no more immune to hijacking by the unprincipled, than is Christianity. The history of Christendom versus Dar al-Islam is not a history of evil versus good, but merely a history of the contention between two equally ambiguous powers, with Christendom emerging the temporary victor. What makes JIHAD IN THE WEST unique is that these points are driven home with hardly a nod to terrorism. Look to the past, says the book, before Dar al-Islam lost power, and you will see that its ambiguous face is its true face, rather than the product of Western oppression that so many claim. To be sure, JIHAD IN THE WEST tells only part of the story. It tells us about the damage Islam has done, not about the numerous ways in which it has enriched the world; it tells us about the atrocities Muslims have committed, not about the atrocities they have suffered; it tells us about the warlords and conquerers, not about the scholars and scientists. However, the part of the story Fregosi relates to us is a part too often neglected by modern scholars, in their frenzy to bash Western civilization. JIHAD IN THE WEST thus provides a much-needed balance to current trends, and is useful to read alongside of standard accounts of the relationship between the West and Dar al-Islam.
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