The War For Muslim Minds

The events of September 11th, 2001, polarized people in the West and in the Arab world. Jihadists called the tragedy a “triumph,” a way of rallying the Arab world to their cause. Reeling from the disaster, the Bush administration began to wage an all-out war on terrorism. Mainstream Arab sentiment was courted by all sides, via the Internet, on newscasts and in overseas communities of Muslims living in the West. Gilles Kepel, Professor and Chair of Middle East Studies at the Institute of Political Studies in Paris, joins Larry to talk about his new book The War For Muslim Minds: Islam and the West. He says that one of the most important battles will not be in Palestine or Iraq, but for the sentiment of Arabs living in the West, a new generation of Muslims not dispossessed by events in the Middle East.