The Enemy Within is the first volume in Islam and the West, a three-volume series by scholar A. S. Ibrahim examining the rise and reach of political Islam in the modern world. This volume turns to the United States, analyzing how Islamist movements engage with American institutions, politics, and public life.
Drawing on primary sources, classical Islamic texts, and contemporary events, Ibrahim distinguishes political Islam as an ideology from Islam as a faith, and traces how that ideology operates within an open society-through advocacy organizations, activism, immigration, and the contest over public institutions. The book approaches a charged subject with historical context, careful argument, and scholarly restraint rather than polemic.
Collected from Ibrahim's essays and paired with new retrospective commentary, the volume offers general readers, students, faculty, and policymakers a documented and accessible account of one of the defining questions of our time.
A. S. Ibrahim holds PhDs from Fuller Theological Seminary and the University of Haifa and is professor of Islamic studies at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is the author of more than fifteen books.