"Wherever you are, death will find you, even in the looming tower." 
 -The Qu'ran, Sura 4:78 
 Hiraba (Hirb@), the Arabic word for terror, piracy, or unlawful warfare. To be punished with the strictest penalties. 
 SEE the young men in their white tunics go out, and charge from the trenches against Soviet tanks, and the suited FBI and CIA men squabble on matters of 'jurisdiction' and 'sensitive information', and self-appointed holy men and saviors meditate in caves on how to save the words of prophets, and their followers drink in action movies and dream of being holy Rambos and warrior priests. 
 Lawrence Wright has done the Western World a great service, stringing together this narrative from bloody sinews of history. He retells the history and ideology of early Islamic fundamentalist internationalism, and the biographies of many chief 'founding fathers' - Ayman al-Zawahiri, Muhammad Omar, Osama bin Laden. 
 From where does terrorism arise? Not solely because of our freedoms, as the Bush-men so stupidly proclaim, but the systematic denial and repression of their own, the lack of civil society, dictatorship, political stagnation, and poverty. The view that political leadership is corrupt, and that they prostitute themselves to foreign powers. Smart young men seeing the necessity of change, and choosing the most violent path possible. And then we have our own American ignorance and heavy-handedness contributing to our own disastrous foreign image. 
 A necessary introduction. Much more is to be done.