Raymond Ibrahim
Raymond Ibrahim (born in 1973) is an American research librarian, translator, author and columnist. His focus is Arabic history and language[1], and current events.
Biography
Ibrahim was born in the United States to Egyptian Coptic immigrants. He is fluent in Arabic and English. Ibrahim studied at California State University, Fresno, where he wrote a Master's thesis under Victor Davis Hanson on an early military encounter between Islam and Byzantium based on medieval Arabic and Greek texts. Ibrahim also took graduate courses at Georgetown University's Center of Contemporary Arab Studies and is studying toward a PhD in medieval Islamic history at Catholic University.
Career
Ibrahim was previously an Arab language specialist for the Near East section of the Library of Congress,[2] and the associate director of the Middle East Forum. He is currently a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.[3]
The 9/11 attacks played a pivotal role in Ibrahim's formative outlook. As he explains in the Chronicle of Higher Education, they occurred while he was doing research for his M.A. thesis which centered on the role of the jihad in early Islamic conquests, causing him to expand from a study of history and theology into politics and current events, reading up on al-Qaeda and other Islamist organizations, and watching Al Jazeera. He claims that he was immediately struck by the continuity evident between the words, deeds, and goals of the 7th century mujahidin ("jihadists"), whom he had been studying for years, and the nearly verbatim words, deeds, and goals of 21st century Islamic radicals. Since then, he has maintained that to truly understand contemporary Islam and Islamism, one must first understand early Islamic history and doctrine.
Ibrahim is the editor and translator of The Al-Qaeda Reader, which he published after discovering hitherto unknown al-Qaeda treatises written in Arabic that he says "proves once and for all that, despite the propaganda of al-Qaeda and its sympathizers, radical Islam's war with the West is not finite and limited to political grievances—real or imagined—but is existential, transcending time and space and deeply rooted in faith".[4]
Reception
An article Ibrahim wrote on taqiyya that was commissioned and published by Jane's Islamic Affairs Analyst on September 26, 2008 [5],[6] was later characterized by another author in Jane's Islamic Affairs Analyst as being "well-researched, factual in places but ... ultimately misleading".[7]
References
- ^ "Terrorist letter's validity doubted", The Washington Times, October 18, 2005
- ^ "Bin Laden writings to be translated", USA Today, Associated Press, January 20, 2005
- ^ [1]
- ^ "In Their Own Words; Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri explain their bloody actions.", The Washington Post, October 7, 2007
- ^ [2]
- ^ http://jiaa.janes.com/public/jiaa/special_reports.shtml
- ^ "Interpreting Taqiyya: Special Report", Jane's Islamic Affairs Analyst. IHS Jane's Information Group. November 12, 2008.
Publications
- The Al Qaeda Reader (editor and translator), Doubleday, 2007, ISBN 978-0-385-51655-6
- "How Taqiyya Alters Islam's Rules of War", Middle East Quarterly, Winter 2010, pp. 3–13
- "Are Judaism and Christianity as Violent as Islam?", Middle East Quarterly, Summer 2009, pp. 3–12
- "An Analysis of Al-Qa'ida's Worldview: Reciprocal Treatment or Religious Obligation", Middle East Review of International Affairs, Vol. 12, No. 3, September 2008
- "Studying the Islamic Way of War", National Review Online, September 11, 2008
- "Islam's Doctrines of Deception", Jane's Islamic Affairs Analyst, September 26, 2008
- "Jesus and Mohammad, Version 2.0", National Review Online, September 10, 2007
- "The Two Faces of Al Qaeda", The Chronicle of Higher Education, Vol. 54, Issue 4, p. B3, September 21, 2007
- "Islam gets concessions; Infidels get conquered", Los Angeles Times, December 5, 2006
External links
Raymond Ibrahim biography, Pundicity.com