This is the culmination of many years of feet-on-the-ground reporting and analysis—many of them spent actually fighting alongside mujahideen. It is a masterful synthesis of the experience and insight that answers the most pressing questions that answers the most pressing questions the West confronts regarding the Muslim world. The work identifies the historical, political and religious factors responsible for generating hostility in the Islamic world towards the West.

Employing the model of Britain’s imperialist hegemony in Asia, which culminated in the eighteenth-century Raj, Margolis explores in fascinating detail whether the West—and in particular the United States-risks a repetition of the Raj experience.

A blunt, penetrating and clear-eyed analysis of the reality behind the rhetoric of conflict between the West and the Muslim world and a blueprint for moving forward.