Jamestown’s Michael W.S. Ryan Releases New Book

Decoding Al Qaeda’s Strategy: The Deep Battle Against America

Jamestown Senior Fellow Michael W.S. Ryan’s new book, Decoding Al-Qaeda’s Strategy: The Deep Battle Against America, is now available for purchase. 

By analyzing the work of well-known and obscure al-Qaeda theoreticians, Dr. Ryan finds that jihadist terrorism strategy has more in common with guerrilla strategies than mainstream Islam. In his new book, Dr. Ryan encourages strategists and researchers to devote their attention more to jihadi ideas than to jihadist military operations.

Dr. Ryan examines the Salafist-Jihadist roots of al-Qaeda’s ideology and concludes that al-Qaeda’s political-military strategy is revolutionary and largely a departure from classic concepts of jihad. By providing a theoretical framework for analyzing al-Qaeda’s plans and operations, Dr. Ryan aims to help the reader understand who al-Qaeda is, what they are trying to accomplish and how they are trying to achieve their goals.

Decoding Al-Qaeda’s Strategy: The Deep Battle Against America, published by Columbia University Press, is now available. Dr. Ryan’s next book, The Heirs of Al-Qaeda: The Evolution of the Global Jihadist Movement, will focus on the Salafi-Jihadist groups that have emerged across the Middle East and North Africa following the killing of Osama bin Laden.

For more information or to purchase the book from Columbia University Press, click here