Alongside them reemerges a distorted and damaging stereotype of Islam, one that is repeatedly recycled and amplified in moments of crisis.
Over the past two decades, numerous Western studies have sought to establish a direct link between terrorist operations and Muslim migrants in particular, often proclaiming the “death” of multiculturalism on the grounds that it allegedly threatens Western civilization and identity. Such readings have frequently overlooked the deeper geopolitical, economic, and social dimensions of the problem. Against this backdrop, Dr. Tarek Dahroug offers a nuanced and rigorous interpretation of the phenomenon, blending his academic training in Egypt and France with his professional experience in diplomacy to uncover and contain the roots of conflict. His aim is nothing less than to rescue the world from the nightmare of hatred and terrorism, while disentangling Islam and Muslims from the distorted images unjustly imposed upon them.
In his book The Turban and the Bullet: The Geopolitics of Jihadist Organizations from Afghanistan to Europe—from Al-Qaeda to the Islamic State, Dr. Dahroug traces, through the lens of geopolitics and the history of international relations, the evolution of jihadist organizations and their penetration into regions that until recently were considered secure. He examines the political, social, and economic conditions that enabled the spread of terrorism and ideological extremism, as well as the West’s growing anxiety over religious difference in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks.
This anxiety was often translated into the scapegoating of Muslim migrants and refugees for broader societal and economic challenges. Ideas that once circulated discreetly within Western political circles—alongside Francis Fukuyama’s “End of History” thesis and the rise of Islamophobia—have since become central concerns of public discourse, both in the East and the West.
As the author documents the historical evolution of Western perceptions of Islam, he argues that the Muslim presence in Europe passed through two distinct phases. The first, which he terms “Quiet Islam,” spanned from the 1960s to the late 1980s, a period during which Muslim migration was largely unproblematic within the emerging framework of multiculturalism and posed no perceived threat to national identity. The second phase, beginning in 1989 and continuing to the present, he describes as the era of “Islam in Crisis.”
Within this context, Dahroug traces the relationship between political Islam and Sunni jihadist movements, examining their manifestations in Pakistan, the Afghan jihad, and the doctrine that divides the world into Dar al-Salam and Dar al-Harb. He analyzes the consequences of this binary worldview for both Muslims and non-Muslims, noting that these jihadist currents deliberately framed hostility as a conflict between Islam and Christianity.
This is evidenced by their near-total avoidance of targeting Israel or Jewish and Israeli interests abroad, with only rare exceptions, such as the attack on a Jewish school in France at the beginning of the new millennium.
The book further links the successive shifts in Western attitudes toward Muslims to the evolving relationship between Western powers and the Muslim Brotherhood and its various offshoots.
This trajectory begins with the founding of the Brotherhood in Egypt in 1928, extends to Jamaat-e-Islami in Pakistan in 1947, and encompasses the development of the concept of hakimiyya by Abu al-Ala al-Mawdudi and its influence on Sayyid Qutb. It continues with the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and Ayatollah Khomeini’s rise to power, the arrival of Abu Hamza al-Masri in London from Afghanistan in the same year, and the emergence of London as a hub for hosting jihadist groups.
The narrative proceeds through the assassination of President Anwar Sadat in 1981, the catastrophe of Algeria’s “Black Decade” in 1992, the establishment of the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat following the founding of Al-Qaeda in 1998, the September 11 attacks, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the rise of figures such as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Dahroug also traces the complex journey of these groups through successive political regimes in Pakistan, their alliance with the United States against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, the internal conflicts among jihadist factions, and ultimately the Taliban era and the emergence of new incubators of terrorism in Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Libya, and across North Africa.
The author also examines how global jihadist organizations recruited second-generation youths from marginalized Muslim communities in Europe beginning in the 1990s, a process that further entrenched negative perceptions of Islam within the Western collective consciousness.
In my view, the significance of this book lies not only in its being a rare analysis offered by an Egyptian scholar and diplomat—one that exposes the blind spots of colonial historiography—but, more importantly, in its demonstration that the so-called jihadist project is, in reality, the byproduct of international and regional power politics pursued in the service of narrow interests. This is a reality that must be confronted when dealing with bullets wrapped in interests, concealed beneath turbans.
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