“I do not write in hypotheticals,” writes Aynaz Anni Cyrus. “My standards are documentary and forensic: names, filings, public statements, organizational ties, court records, financial flows, and observable outcomes.” And it’s true. In her important new book, The Architecture of Jihad: Inside the Ideology, Law, and Global Strategy Driving Islam’s Multi-Front Expansion, Cyrus sets out in clear and precise terms, along with abundant documentation, the many methods modern-day Islamic jihadis are using in order to attain their goals of destroying the Judeo-Christian West and restoring the global caliphate.
Aynaz Anni Cyrus knows the ways of Islamic jihadis from her own bitter personal experience. Growing up in Iran, she escaped an attempt to force her into marriage while she was still a child; as a teenager, she managed to get out of the Islamic Republic altogether, although the vengeful and bloodthirsty mullahs still have a bounty on her head. The Architecture of Jihad, however, is not a record of her personal experiences, as worthwhile and enlightening as such a book would be. Instead, it is a dispassionate, concise and comprehensive explanation of the numerous ways jihadis are advancing their cause in America today, while the political and media establishment remains blissfully oblivious to the fact that any such initiative is going on at all.
The Architecture of Jihad demonstrates not only that it is going on, but that it has been for centuries. This book, which is unique among literature about jihad in the West, is divided into two sections: The Classical Jihads and The Modern Jihads. That is groundbreaking enough in itself, as most of the explanations of jihad published in English focus on the theology of jihad, its Qur’anic foundations, and how Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, waged jihad. Others focus in whole or part on the millennium of struggle between jihadis around the world and their victims.