The Secret Agents: Life Inside an al Qaeda Cell

If the radicals' relationship with France is complex, so is France's relationship with them. European intellectuals' fascination with Islamists is inspired by a blend of liberalism, postcolonial guilt, and Marxist-Christian sympathy for the weak. Widely publicized lectures on Islam and modernity attract throngs at the Institut du Monde Arabe (Arab World Institute) in Paris, a sleek, modern building across the Seine from Notre Dame. France is trying to define a moderate brand of Islam compatible with its secular liberalism. The French government and leaders of France's five-million-strong Muslim community are working to forge mutual respect, and a government-run seminary is training a new generation of homebred, moderate imams. France's first Muslim public high school will open soon -- an extraordinary concession for a country staunchly committed to secular education. Much of the credit for Europe's new embrace of moderate Islam, ironically, belongs to bin Laden, for it was his actions and the threat of a true clash of civilizations that prompted the majority of Muslims to normalize their position in and with the West, and the West to integrate those it can.

BROTHERS IN ARMS

Sifaoui warns, nonetheless, that European cities still harbor many who could contract the Islamist fever and take up arms in Chechnya, Kashmir, or Iraq. Having probed the world of al Qaeda sympathizers in Paris and in London's Finsbury Park mosque, he sounds the alarm in defense of democracy and liberalism -- perhaps too violently. Sifaoui's book leaves no hope of ever narrowing the fault line that separates Muslims who reject the West from those, like him, who embrace it.

Although ideological opponents, Bourti and Sifaoui share a common passion for destroying each other's world. Sifaoui's animosity, in fact, often eclipses the rest of the story. His virulent detestation of his "brothers," his crusade to expose them, and his lack of scruples in using their trust to set them up are somewhat troubling. Sifaoui writes that he "wanted to spit in [Bourti's] face, to punch him." He condemns French intellectuals for letting concern with civil rights cloud their evaluation of Islamism -- for believing "that assassins, bombers, and those who slit the throats of women and children are entitled to the same rights as their victims." Sifaoui goes beyond thinking that there can be no excuse for terrorism. The very notion of a moderate Islam, he argues, is nothing but the wishful construct of naive Westerners, deceived into believing it can exist by cunning fanatics plotting to destroy the West.

It turns out, however, that some of Sifaoui's own statements and intentions may be suspect. He claims to have left Algiers in the mid-1990s after too many colleagues and friends perished from Islamist bombs. Some suspect him of being an agent for the Algerian secret service, working in France to blacken the reputation of political Islam and bolster support for the Algerian regime (which regularly imprisons and kills the likes of Bourti and his fellows). Others say that he received asylum in France after having been arrested at home (and perhaps even tortured) following a falling-out with the junta.

Indeed, his current allegiances are difficult to pin down. Sifaoui was involved in the creation of Habib Souaïdia's controversial recent book La sale guerre ("The dirty war"), a former army officer's devastating indictment of the conduct of the Algerian military during the civil war. But he abandoned the project in protest over Souaïdia's claim that the Armed Islamic Group, the militant Islamist organization responsible for many of the war's atrocities, was created by the Algerian secret service. And he even testified on behalf of Khaled Nezzar, Algeria's former military commander, when he subsequently sued Souaïdia for libel.

THE ANGST OF EXILE

There are so many conspiracies about Algeria, and the practices of the uniformed men in power there so resemble those of the bearded men in opposition, that outsiders can be forgiven for getting lost in the tangled threads that wrap around this book's "brothers." And the mystery about Sifaoui's checkered past only adds to the confusion. In the end, the author comes across as a journalist in search of attention, and one who pushes his material to its limits and perhaps even beyond. His ravings against the Islamists echo the Islamists' own intolerance, as well as the ruthlessness of yesterday's revolutionary officers and the callousness of the Arab bourgeoisie that briefly held power after colonialism and proved more liberal in name than in practice. Still, the essence of his story and his critique appears correct and was confirmed when the Parisian police arrested Bourti in early 2003 for roughing up a local imam.

Mes Frères Assassins tells several stories at once: about the workings of a jihadist cell, the radicalizing effects of exile from the Algerian civil war, and the challenges for a Western democracy of assimilating Muslim immigrants. Barely discernible among them is also a psychological profile of would-be terrorists. Long before calls to jihad hit the shores of Europe, many young Arab Muslims there had already turned to delinquency and vandalism. Among the things that troubled them was the contradiction between the liberal, egalitarian ideals of the West and the legacy of servitude they carried over from northern Africa. In the new world, exiles could no longer rely on the comforting predictability of a traditional, hierarchical society; they were hit by the existential anxiety of choice and responsibility and the formidable risk of failure. The racism they encountered did not help, nor did the way their original response -- delinquency -- reinforced it.