Summary of Joby Warrick's Black Flags

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 When he was assigned to the prison, Dr. Sabha was warned about the dangerous inmates. The leader of the sect was a religious scholar named Maqdisi, who was capable of infecting and twisting minds like a Muslim Rasputin.
#2 The doctor began seeing patients, and learned that the group’s core consisted of about two dozen men who had been members of radical Islamic sects that sprang up in Jordan in the early 1990s. Their individual histories were unimpressive.
#3 The leaders of the Zarqa Group, as they were called, were arrested before they could carry out their first operation. The other groups’ targets consisted of small-time symbols of Western corruption. They shared a common creed, an austere brand of Islam invented by Maqdisi.
#4 Maqdisi’s ideas began to solidify, and he began to call for the killing of Arab leaders who were allegedly apostates, meaning they were not following Islam properly. He would often compliment Zarqawi on his toughness, and the two would become close.

Sujets

• Islam
• Political Science
• Middle Eastern
• Middle East
• World

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 11 mai 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9798822506329
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Joby Warrick's Black Flags
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

When he was assigned to the prison, Dr. Sabha was warned about the dangerous inmates. The leader of the sect was a religious scholar named Maqdisi, who was capable of infecting and twisting minds like a Muslim Rasputin.

#2

The doctor began seeing patients, and learned that the group’s core consisted of about two dozen men who had been members of radical Islamic sects that sprang up in Jordan in the early 1990s. Their individual histories were unimpressive.

#3

The leaders of the Zarqa Group, as they were called, were arrested before they could carry out their first operation. The other groups’ targets consisted of small-time symbols of Western corruption. They shared a common creed, an austere brand of Islam invented by Maqdisi.

#4

Maqdisi’s ideas began to solidify, and he began to call for the killing of Arab leaders who were allegedly apostates, meaning they were not following Islam properly. He would often compliment Zarqawi on his toughness, and the two would become close.

#5

Zarqawi and his group had very different personalities. Zarqawi was a physically compact man who had fought bravely in Afghanistan, and his reputation for impulsive violence had followed him into prison. He began memorizing the Koran, and his diffuse rage took on a focus: a fierce, single-minded hatred for perceived enemies of Allah.

#6

There was another side to Zarqawi, one that was rarely seen. He would sometimes act like a little boy when his mother visited, preparing for days and cleaning his clothes. He would also care for the sick and injured among his men.

#7

In 1998, the prison began receiving scores of new inmates as officials sought to relieve overcrowding elsewhere in the system. The Islamists remained cloistered together, but subtle cracks began to appear. Some of the jihadists were openly suggesting that Zarqawi should be the leader, replacing Maqdisi.

#8

When Dr. Sabha freed Zarqawi’s arms, he proceeded with his examination. He began to roll up one of the prisoner’s sleeves to draw a blood sample, but was stopped again by Zarqawi.

#9

The Ikhwan, an Islamic army, had been trained by Saudi Arabia’s first monarch, Ibn Saud, to help him defeat his political rivals. They saw themselves as divinely appointed to purify the region by slaughtering all who allied with foreigners or deviated from their narrow vision of Islam.

#10

In 1999, King Hussein called his oldest son, Abdullah, to the palace and asked him to become crown prince. The title had belonged to Prince Hassan, the king’s brother, since Abdullah was a toddler, but Hussein wanted to change that.

#11

When King Hussein learned that he would be undergoing another bone-marrow transplant, he decided to leave Jordan for the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. His son, Abdullah, would serve as regent during his absence.

#12

The funeral of King Hussein bin Talal was the most impressive event in Jordan since the country’s founding. It was attended by premiers and potentates from seventy-five countries, including four U. S. presidents.

#13

After the funeral, Abdullah took the throne. He was not yet officially king, but he had gone on Jordanian television to signal the change to the nation. Now he was the owner of the sagging economy, the fractious politics, and the regional disputes.

#14

To serve as ruler of a Middle Eastern country is to give up any expectation of dying of old age. Jordan was no exception, as the extraordinary perils of the job seemed to generate a kingly appetite for dangerous hobbies.

#15

After he became king, all traces of the daredevil prince disappeared. He quickly eliminated risks that could have threatened his reign as monarch. He reestablished his tattered relations with the royal family, offering the position of crown prince to his younger brother Hashem.

#16

King Abdullah tried to make peace with the Islamists, releasing sixteen Muslim Brotherhood activists who had been in jail since a street protest. But other Islamists would not be swayed by the release of a few detainees. They wanted a say in running the country, even if they were divided about where they would take it.

#17

Jordan had already experienced the trauma of being invaded by Islamic extremists once before, when the Ottomans sided with Germany in World War I. In 1916, Sharif Hussein helped Britain and the Allied powers drive against the Turks in exchange for a promise of future British recognition of the new Arab-Islamic nation.

#18

After World War I, the British and French created new states out of the Ottoman lands they had captured. The British created an Arab state for Sharif Hussein’s third son, Abdullah, on the eastern side of the Jordan River. The first serious threat to Jordan’s sovereignty came from the Ikhwan hordes in the 1920s.

#19

In March 1999, the country marked the end of the official mourning period for King Hussein’s death. The law required the state to deliver inmates to the town where they were first arrested, so Zarqawi and his mentor, Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, took seats on the van bound for Amman.

#20

While both men had wives and children they rarely saw, and were constantly monitored by the country’s secret police, Zarqawi was torn between two families: the one in Zarqa, whom he had helped establish, and the one he had gained in prison.

#21

In June 2006, Zarqawi tried to escape Jordan by claiming he was going into business as an international honey merchant. He was detained by the Mukhabarat, and his true plans were revealed: to link up with terrorists.

#22

On March 29, 1994, Abu Haytham was part of a team that raided an apartment where Zarqawi was staying. They found him alone in a back room, dead-asleep. The agents had to toss his gun into their van along with him.

#23

The Jordanian intelligence agency, the Mukhabarat, knew a lot about Zarqawi, even in those early days before prison. They had collected information on his thick police file and his criminal history. He had been a troublemaker since childhood, and had skipped several chances to succeed in life.

#24

Zarqawi’s mother had pushed him into joining the Islamists, as she believed he was a good man who just needed a better life. He had become highly emotional, and quick to cry whenever he read the Koran.

#25

Zarqawi’s fir