We Love Death as You Love Life

When Mohammed Siddique Khan led a group of fellow believers into the London Underground on the morning of July 7, 2005, they did not think far beyond the immediate impact of their attack. Driven by anger at the West's global treatment of Muslims, a frustration stoked by the rhetoric of foreign extremists, and wounded by a sense of extreme isolation from the society in which they were born and raised, these suicide bombers sought to avenge the deaths of their fellow Muslims and shape the world in an image that would be pleasing to their God. Yet while Khan and his followers were convinced they were carrying out a holy mission described in a chilling videotaped statement in which Khan quoted Osama Bin Laden's famous utterance "We Love Death As You Love Life" -- a far more rational and historical narrative motivated their attack. Raffaello Pantucci investigates the volatile forces driving these men, alongside hundreds of other young British Muslims who have equally responded to the jihadist call to fight enemy forces both at home and abroad. Beginning with the migration of Arabs to the United Kingdom and the establishment of diaspora communities with strong ties to the Middle East and South Asia, the book provides a brief history of Islam's arrival in the United Kingdom. Pantucci later discusses the arrival of jihadist warriors from the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan and historical events in Britain during the 1990's that shaped the environment in which the London bombers were raised, revisiting the events that occurred before Mohammed Siddique Khan organized his attack and placing he and his followers' actions in context. Based on research conducted while Pantucci worked as a scholar in London, this book offers the first comprehensive portrait of jihadist ideas and violence as they have evolved in the United Kingdom.