Against Us: The New Face of America's Enemies in the Muslim World

by Jim Sciutto

Overview

"A solid job of reporting, a personal journey of discovery, and a wake-up call for all who read it." --Charles Gibson, ABC News

After nearly one hundred assignments for ABC News in Muslim countries, Jim Sciutto brings back this disturbing truth: the Al-Qaeda--inspired view of an evil America bent on destroying Islam has moved from the fringes to the mainstream.

Sciutto profiles a cross-section of people in the Arab world, including a former Al-Qaeda jihadi turned electrician in Saudi Arabia, a Jordanian college student willing to risk his life by killing Americans in Baghdad, a Christian woman who supports Hezbollah in Lebanon, bitter pro-democracy advocates in Egypt who feel betrayed by the United States, and British-born Muslim terrorists living in London. The result is an alarming portrait of the depth and scope of anti-American sentiment.

Yet there is hope for America to turn the tide of hate. Democratic ideals are still held in high esteem, even as America's perceived actions against Muslims are not, and President Obama's election has raised hopes for change among many Muslims.

Against Us is an urgent wake-up call for all Americans-and in particular those charged with formulating U.S. foreign policy-to rebuild relations with the Arab world and restore confidence in American values.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780307406897
Publisher:	Crown Publishing Group
Publication date:	09/15/2009
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	7.92(w) x 5.26(h) x 0.64(d)

About the Author

JIM SCIUTTO is the senior foreign correspondent for ABC News, the first correspondent to hold this position since Peter Jennings and Pierre Salinger. He has reported from more than forty countries in Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East, including thirteen assignments in Iraq. In 2007 he won the prestigious George Polk Award for Television Reporting. He lives in London with his wife, Gloria Riviera, who is also a correspondent for ABC News.

Table of Contents

Introduction     ix
Jordan: The Terrorist with a Marketing Major     1
Lebanon: Christians for Hezbollah     31
Egypt: The Forgotten Democratic Hero     63
Iraq: Stanch the Bleeding     95
Iran: Deaf to America     127
The UK: Baghdad Comes to Birmingham     161
Afghanistan: An Afghan Girl's Wildest Dreams     193
Saudi Arabia: The Jihadi Turned Electrician     219
Epilogue: Pakistan     247
Acknowledgments     253
Index     257

Editorial Reviews

For far too long, U.S. policymakers have relied on a faulty, dangerous premise: We only have to convince the rest of the world of our righteousness to dispel the growing, anti-American tide that has swept across the Arab and Muslim worlds since 2001. In his insightful, captivating and informative book, Jim Sciutto, a veteran reporter in the Middle East, shows how misguided that notion is. To much of the rest of the world, particularly the Middle East, American foreign policy appears singularly imperial. In fact, in less than a decade, two distinct versions of reality have emerged — one there, one here — and in the way America is perceived, they rarely intersect. We can’t wish away what has happened to our image. We have to understand the phenomenon. We have to recognize it. And Sciutto’s book is essential reading in doing so.”
—Anthony Shadid, Middle East correspondent, Washington Post

“Jim Sciutto begins Against Us with his discovery that some of those who hate America live literally down his street.  He goes on to find similar sentiments in a discomforting–even frightening–number of places. Against Us is a solid job of reporting, a personal journey of discovery, and a wakeup call for all who read it.”
—Charles Gibson, ABC News

“Although he paints a sobering picture, Sciutto offers hope for Americans seeking amicable relationships with Muslims …. Much-needed light on dark geopolitical realities.”
—Booklist

"A foreign correspondent for ABC News, Sciutto examines and explains the increasingly negative attitudes toward the United States among citizens of Muslim and Arab countries in this deeply insightful book. Structured around interviews conducted in the Middle East and the U.K., the book offers ample anecdotal evidence to suggest that anti-American sentiment–once the province of fringe groups–has gone mainstream, becoming in effect, a form of Middle Eastern nationalism, uniting moderates and radicals, Muslims and Christians for whom “freedom implies the freedom from American interference.” Sciutto weaves together interviews with historical background, poll data and personal experience in this consistently informative and captivating account. In the strongest interviews, including one with a young, reform-minded Iranian activist and another with an Iraqi doctor, the book sets intense, sometimes horrifying experiences against a complicated and changing political backdrop. The author makes a few amorphous foreign policy recommendations on the basis of his research, but the book is less interesting for what it reveals about American policy than for its empathetic and candid depiction of its subjects and their lives."
—Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

A foreign correspondent for ABC News, Sciutto examines and explains the increasingly negative attitudes toward the United States among citizens of Muslim and Arab countries in this deeply insightful book. Structured around interviews conducted in the Middle East and the U.K., the book offers ample anecdotal evidence to suggest that anti-American sentiment-once the province of fringe groups-has gone mainstream, becoming in effect, a form of Middle Eastern nationalism, uniting moderates and radicals, Muslims and Christians for whom "freedom implies the freedom from American interference." Sciutto weaves together interviews with historical background, poll data and personal experience in this consistently informative and captivating account. In the strongest interviews, including one with a young, reform-minded Iranian activist and another with an Iraqi doctor, the book sets intense, sometimes horrifying experiences against a complicated and changing political backdrop. The author makes a few amorphous foreign policy recommendations on the basis of his research, but the book is less interesting for what it reveals about American policy than for its empathetic and candid depiction of its subjects and their lives. (Sept.)

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Publishers Weekly

ABC News senior foreign news correspondent Sciutto considers Muslim anger at America and offers muddled reflections. That the United States suffers from a toxic reputation among many Muslims, especially since the Iraq war and occupation, should surprise no one. The author, who began covering the Middle East only after 9/11, finds that anti-American feeling is disturbingly mainstream and takes the problem personally. Calling it "demoralizing," Sciutto admits, "the truth is that the hatred insults me. It may be an inherently American quality to believe our own hype, but I do." Despite this self-limiting premise, the book pursues the roots of the hatred and makes familiar indictments of the Bush administration's support for dictators, its diplomacy tailored to oil interests and its sanction of torture. Fresh insights and forward-looking prescriptions, however, are in scant supply. Sciutto does successfully explore an essential contradiction: Many Muslims view America as omnipotent, an ideal of sorts, but also as untrustworthy and disappointing, and that paradox breeds conspiracy theories. Looking at post-Iraq war security, reconstruction and political failures, they can't believe America could be so incompetent, concluding that it's all intentional. Well-cast thumbnail sketches of a "reformed" Saudi jihadist, an underground Iranian blogger, a disillusioned Iraqi trauma surgeon and an Afghan schoolgirl, among others, effectively humanize the problem. But profiling nine countries, Sciutto seems fully at ease in none. He clings to too few characters and renders their stories too thin. In the chapter on Lebanon, for example, his portrait of a 24-year-old Christian uncharacteristicallysympathetic to Hezbollah overwhelms the narrative and gives a distorted picture of the nation's intricate politics. When Sciutto was the only reporter embedded with U.S. Special Forces during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, a prescient Green Beret predicted, "Today they're giving us the thumbs-up. Tomorrow they'll be giving us the finger." Five years later, this book gives disappointingly short shrift to the events and attitudes that forged the crucible of U.S.-Muslim dissonance. A missed opportunity.

Kirkus Reviews