Excerpt:
As we know too well by now, sometime in the past century the religion of Muhammad was weaponized—that is, there was a coupling of terrorism and Islam among its militant believers. This development didn't take place in isolation, however. Islamism, as we now call a radical version of the faith, emerged in close contact with the West. In the decades before 9/11 Western governments often turned a blind eye to Islamist agitation or, in a few cases, naïvely nurtured the very people who today inspire or lead terrorist attacks in Pakistan, Yemen and other parts of the world—even, as we were reminded by last week's attempted bombing in Times Square, in the U.S.
As a practical philosophy, Islamism can be traced back to an Egyptian schoolteacher named Hasan al-Banna. In 1928 he founded the Muslim Brotherhood, a group devoted to restoring a fundamentalist idea of Islam to government and society alike. At the time, thinkers in the Muslim world were obsessed by the West's colonial dominance and by their own civilization's decline. Banna was a populist who aimed his idea of Islamic revival at a wide audience by putting his thoughts—and his rigid interpretation of the Koran—into plain words. The movement tried to broaden its appeal still further by emphasizing social justice and providing welfare services. The Muslim Brotherhood's methods have inspired Islamists ever since, including, today, the members of al Qaeda and Hamas.
Banna was assassinated in 1949; his group was banned in Egypt and hounded out of other Arab states. But the Brotherhood found safe haven in postwar Europe. This sanctuary was essential to the Brotherhood's future but attracted little attention until the attacks of 9/11, for which Europe was the staging ground. As a Journal reporter (who, incidentally, left the newspaper earlier this year), Ian Johnson spent a good part of the years following 9/11 untangling Europe's webs of radical Islam. The result is "A Mosque in Munich," an impeccably researched and eye-opening work of social and political history.