3 Review(s)

‘What if an ideology, which is meant to impart wisdom and guidance to humanity, itself losesall its control and causes serious woes to the entire world?’In the last few decades, an extremely anti-pluralistic, visibly misogynistic and terribly intolerantstrain of Islam has taken control of the Arabian heartland and systematically spread out to othercountries, eventually wreaking havoc across the world.Covering the expansion of political Islam in the modern Arab and non-Arab world until thedawn of Crown Prince Bin Salman era in Saudi Arabia, Hasnain’s thorough research explores theradicalization of Muslim youth in North America and Europe, as well as the sectarian fault linesand rise of the Shia crescent in the Middle-East. These developments ultimately led to the rise ofIslamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), along with the weaponization of Islamic thought through theuse of various social media platforms for the recruitment of jihadi volunteers, which has plaguedthe world in the past decade.An important work, it exposes how extremist outfits, with the support of the religious apparatus,methodically managed to scar the face of a faith that claims to have the second largest number offollowers in the world.