The literal truth about terrorism: an analysis of post-9/11 popular US non-fiction books on terrorism

Abstract

More books with the word ‘terrorism’ in the title have been published in the twenty-first century than the combined total of all such books prior to that. Over half of these were on the subject of ‘Islamic terrorism’. The sheer volume of such texts, without even taking into consideration their contents, contributed to rendering as ‘true’, the existence of the phenomenon they publicised. Such an increase in the literature on the subject of Islamic terrorism was made possible by an overall relaxation of usually strict enunciative rules and regulations governing discursive production. This article explores the effects of the loosening of the latter controls through an analysis of popular non-fiction books published on the subject of terrorism in the United States in the early years of the ‘war on terror’ and the authors of these books, as the existence of these texts – never mind their influence – has been ignored by terrorism scholars to date.

Keywords:

• best-sellers
• discourse
• Foucault
• Hirsi Ali
• Islam
• Jihad
• Muslim
• Spencer

Notes

1. The Guardian newspaper first published this opinion in an article by Peter Beaumont on 22 July 2011, just as news of the attacks in Utoya began to emerge. It carried the headline ‘Oslo bomb suspicion falls on Islamist militants’. Later that afternoon, it substituted the article with one headline ‘Norway attacks suggest political motive’, by the same author (Beaumont 2011). There was no explanation for the removal of the original article, nor any notification. A search for the original article will result in one being pointed to the substitute, but the original is still available on various social media sites and other forums.

2. A photograph of the The Sun's front page as it appeared on the day is available from: http://twitpic.com/5u6n2l [Accessed 6 August 2012].

3. Anders Behring Breivik's ‘manifesto’ entitled 2083: A Declaration of European Independence [online] is available from: http://publicintelligence.net/anders-behring-breiviks-complete-manifesto-2083-a-european-declaration-of-independence/ [Accessed 6 August 2012].

4. The phrase ‘manifest destiny’ was coined by Democrat John L. Sullivan during the debate over the annexation of Texas in the 1840s, and remained a part of American political and cultural discourse throughout the nineteenth century as it continued expansionist policies against indigenous Americans and Mexicans (see Nayak and Malone 2009, p. 266).

5. See ‘About Robert Spencer’, available from http://www.jihadwatch.org/spencer [Accessed 6 August 2012].

6. See http://www.jihadwatch.org [Accessed 6 August 2012].

7. See ‘About Robert Spencer’, available from http://www.jihadwatch.org/spencer [Accessed 6 August 2012].

8. The MacArthur Study Bible, first published in 1997, won the ECPA's Gold Medallion Book Award in 1998 and the Gold/Platinum/Diamond Book Award in 2007. His other best-selling books include The MacArthur New Testament Commentary series, which has sold more than a million copies and won the ECPA's Platinum Award in 2005 for sales figures over a million, and Twelve Ordinary Men, which sold more than half a million copies and won the ECPA Gold Award in 2008.

9. See ‘Grace to You’ website at http://www.gty.org/ [Accessed 6 August 2012].

10. Recent developments in the brothers’ story are worth noting here as they provide testimony as to the strength of the ‘will to knowledge’ that underpinned American discourse during this period. Ergun Caner was appointed Dean of Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary at around the time of the book's publication. In 2010 it emerged that Caner had included ‘factual statements that are self-contradictory’ in his biographical details. These contradictions are significant: Caner claimed to have been raised as a radical Sunni Muslim in Turkey, in ‘a climate of Jihad’, hence the ‘insider's look’ at Islam that he, together with his brother, was able to provide in their co-authored book. ‘In one sermon, he put it more bluntly, saying he was trained to do what the Sept. 11 terrorists had done’, as reported in the Washington Post (Wan and Boorstein 2010). It transpires, however, that although the Caners converted to Christianity as teenagers, they were not brought up in ‘jihadist Turkey’. Despite the collapse of the edifice on which Ergun Caner's ‘expertise on Islam’ was based, Liberty University retained him as a professor, although they decided not to renew his contract as Dean when it expired in June 2010.

11. See profile of ‘Mark A. Gabriel, PhD’, available from http://www.christianbookpreviews.com/christian-book-author.php?isbn=1591852919 [Accessed 6 August 2012].

12. See ‘Biography of Walid Shoebat’, available from: http://www.shoebat.com/bio.php [Accessed 6 August 2012].

13. Shoebat's October 2006 lecture at Columbia University attracted controversy when the University changed it from a public lecture to an invite-only event shortly before the lecture was due to begin. There is no record of the lecture on the Columbia University website, but a video of a portion of the lecture is available on YouTube; see ‘Walid Shoebat, Ex Jihadi Columbia University’, available from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoMq5HYMpZQ [Accessed 6 August 2012].

14. ACT stands for ‘American Congress for Truth. Act! For America’. See ‘About ACT! for America’, available from: http://www.actforamerica.org/index.php/learn/about-act-for-america [Accessed 6 August 2012].

15. See ‘Brigitte Gabriel: Leading Expert on Global Islamic Terrorism’, available from http://www.actforamerica.org/index.php/learn/about-ms-gabriel [Accessed 6 August 2012].