Truth Jihad reviewed by Dr, Eric Larsen, English professor, novelist and author of A Nation Gone Blind: America in an Age of Simplification and Deceit (Shoemaker & Hoard, 2006)

http://www.ericlarsen.net/foodforthought12.html

Dear Readers:

Truth Jihad, the extraordinary new book by Kevin Barrett, is due from Progressive Press this coming January/February. This is tremendously good news.

Barrett is the founder of the important and influential MUJCA (Muslim Jewish Christian Alliance for 9/11 Truth) and has himself emerged as one of the most dedicated, eloquent, humane, humorous, and influential of all the many who are involved seriously in the 9/11 Truth movement. I want to go on record as saying that the publication of Truth Jihad is an event of far more than routine significance, both for the Truth movement itself and for the present state of publishing in general.

In short, Truth Jihad is a book not only true, but, unlike any other work that I know on the subject of 9/11 truth, it's a powerful and most intensely appealing combination of the humane, the authentic, the personal, the universal, the impassioned, the reasoned, the thoughtful, the irreverent, the reverent, the serious, the satiric, and—hardly infrequently—one of the funniest things you're ever likely to read.

Barrett is a unique and uniquely important figure, and he's written a unique—and uniquely powerful and indispensable—book on 9/11. But it's a book also on his own life as student, as young graduate, then as writer, married man, convert to Islam, father, and—more now than ever—emergent public figure who hilariously and powerfully advances the cause of 9/11 Truth.

You can most easily find out that all these things I'm saying are true by reading Truth Jihad itself—which you can do by ordering it directly from the press.

And you can read what I myself wrote about the book after having been so lucky as to have read it in manuscript.

And, for a real treat, you can read not just one excerpt from Truth Jihad itself but more. As you read these sections from the book—and as the life and drive and humanity and humor and sheer good character of the passages impel you, don't hesitate, again, to order the book. I did. And I'll be grateful for it all over again, and stirred by it all over again—braced by its earnest yet funny, scholarly yet personal, intellectual yet comradely, theoretical yet also perfectly blunt telling of the plain and obvious truth about 9/11, and by its homage to life, nation, people, family, children—and, above all, to a future that's intact, whole, honest, and true.

May such a future come to be. Somehow.

Buy the book. Read the book. Treasure it. If, as with A Nation Gone Blind, you find Truth Jihad going unreviewed in the "mainstream" papers, magazines, and other so-called "major" review outlets—well, given the way things are now in our unwell and endangered nation, you can take such an ignoring of it as a credit to the book for being in fact a huge, moving, humane, and passionate voice for the truth—exactly the sort of thing that does not get reviewed in these dark and compromised days.

Trust me. I've been there. I know. And I also know Kevin's book.


......................................................................Eric Larsen
......................................................................November 22, 2006



Truth Jihad reviewed by Jim Hogue , Vermont 9/11 Truth activist, Green Party gubernatorial candidate, radio personality, and farmer: http://vtcommons.org/blog/6

Truth Jihad is an autobiography. Dr. Kevin Barrett focuses on his experiences as a student, practitioner, and professor of Islam, and on his crusade for 9/11 Truth. It is also an appeal from his soul to a deadened, fearful, and paralyzed citizenry. His romantic belief is that, if the citizenry were not so deadened, fearful, and paralyzed, they would rise up in the face of treason. Surely they would. He writes, “If the American people understood that top officials of their own government had orchestrated the destruction of the World Trade Center and the murder of thousands of Americans in pursuit of a criminal agenda, they would certainly rise up in rebellion, and turn their nation's policies 180 degrees away from that criminal agenda.”

Dr. Barrett and most of us in the 9/11 Truth movement have come to some conclusions regarding the 9/11 attacks. One of those conclusions is that The 9/11 Commission and most of the main-stream and alternative media are deliberately protecting the perpetrators of the attacks.  With few exceptions, the rest have their heads in the sand, remaining willfully ignorant.

Given the history of media complicity in government malfeasance and corruption, this does not surprise us. “Lying for the sake of a monthly salary may have its advantages,” quips Oscar Wilde, “but leads to a kind of ostentatious obscurity.” But the, perhaps, naïve hope is that this time it will be different: different because, never before has a mass movement grown up to expose a false flag operation. Our further hope is that the truth about 9/11 and several other attacks (such as Oklahoma City and the USS Liberty) will not only see the light of day, but will also bring to justice the criminals behind them.

A great service to us is Dr. Barrett's explanation of the mythical proportions of the 9/11 attack as a successful psy-op (psychological operation). He explains that 9/11 has instilled itself in the American psyche as myth. Myth, as opposed to legend, is difficult to discuss rationally because myth is irrational belief, venerated as sacred truth.
Suggesting that there is something missing in the mental equipment of those who believe that 19 Arabs hijacked four aircraft, proceeded unimpeded through US air space, caused massive steel buildings to explode, emulsify, and collapse into their own footprints, while the evil doers' plans were exposed by many foreign intelligence services to US officials and investors, and then turned up alive may be accurate. Be that as it may, Dr. Barrett is among those who are attempting to unstupify a large segment of the population by exposing the facts.

Dr. Barrett has done his homework. He cites Griffin, Tarpley, Meyssan, Icke, Ahmed, Clarke, Zwicker, Vidal, Ruppert, Marrs, Hopsicker, Honegger, Hicks and many others.
He hasn't caught up with Eric Laurent ( La Face Cachée du Onze Septembre ), Brisard and Dasquié (Forbidden Truth) or the lesser-known authors, but he has, never-the-less, provided us with a wealth of unquestionable evidence interlaced with humorous anecdotes of his adventures in his quest for truth.

One amusing and amazing tale is entitled “Le Paris d'Amérique” about a deservedly unknown rock group, “Les Casse Pieds,” that was catapulted by a gullible French press toward fame if not fortune. It begins:

“I am often asked the question: If government agents really did blow the World Trade Center to kingdom come, fly a military plane and/or missile into the Pentagon, create an illusion of suicide hijackings, and then cover the whole thing up . . . how in the world could they get away with it? Are the Bush Boyz really that smart? My answer, though I am usually too polite to say it, is: ‘ No, it isn't that they're that smart – it's that you're that stupid. '

“Most journalists . . . will believe anything you tell them no matter how outlandish, if it fits the kind of prefabricated ‘story' that will help their employers sell advertisements. And the general public, aside from those who use genuinely alternative sources, will believe just about anything the journalists tell them, no matter how preposterous. 

“I know all this from experience. I helped feed information that was not just false, but hallucinatory – downright phantasmagoric, even – to the French mainstream media. Then I watched them lap it up and report the hallucination as reality on the nightly news and in all the mainstream papers and newsmagazines. Since French journalists are by and large at least three times as smart and four times as skeptical as their American counterparts, I shudder to think how easy it was for Rove, Wolfowitz and Co. to hoodwink the American people on 9/11.”

Five minutes of fact checking would have exposed the hoax, but the actual result was that Le Nouvel Observateur and L'Express (the equivalents of Newsweek and Time) ran lead stories about a Hollywood film contract, with Barrett as director.

It's a delightful anecdote, written with panache.

As a scholar Barrett consistently draws upon his knowledge of Islamic history (in particular Andalusian Spain) and his experiences with the organization he founded: MUJCA – Muslim-Jewish-Christian Alliance for 9/11 Truth. http://mujca.com .

It is this religious aspect of 9/11 Truth to which Dr. Barrett refers in the title, Truth Jihad . Following the lead of Dr. David Ray Griffin, Barrett appeals to all people to find strength through religion to call for the truth. The particular logic and necessity for Islam to rally behind the truth movement could lie in preventing WW3 and/or the further unleashing of the US/British/Israeli imperialistic might against Iran. This unleashing of force cannot be accomplished without further demonizing Iran, Syria and Lebanon. It is Barrett's hope that Muslims, Jews and Christians around the world will grasp the seemingly obvious fact that 9/11 Truth is the means by which peace can by achieved. By uniting against the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks, Muslims will find the key to vindicating themselves, and ending the fabricated wars against them.

Dr Barrett also explains the physiological and psychological effects of the attacks, concluding that the visible destruction (the Hollywood effects) and the resulting shock and loss of life were so devastating and deeply moving that the visceral and emotional trauma (suffered by the families, firefighters and police in particular) were overwhelming. This trauma, combined with the false impression that our government protects us, accomplished the desired unifying effect: any information pointing in the direction of government complicity created, in many, a “cognitive dissonance,” the result of which is always an inability to act. It creates paralysis. It creates passivity, obedience, and docility.  The logic: the government protects us. It would not attack us. Checkmate.

With notable exceptions among the 9/11 families, those who seek the facts of 9/11 do not face that overwhelming hurdle, as these researchers were 1) not directly involved 2) not under the impression that our government looks out for us. 3) They were aware of other false flag operations throughout history 4) are opposed to empire building and 5) understand the appetite of the military/industrial complex. And with the works of Tarpley, Schwarz, Griffin, Thompson, Ahmed et al , they see clearly what patriots (religious or otherwise) must do, and they have been devoting considerable energy and resources to the task. Many are eye-witnesses and insiders (such as Randy Glass, William Rodriguez, Sibel Edmunds and Colleen Rowley). As Dr. Barrett points out, this is not a movement lacking in facts or testimony.

Lastly, as sympathetic as this book is toward the caution and silence of the 9/11 families and first responders, it reflects Barrett's passion to bring to justice the perpetrators of the crime, and the gate-keepers who have shrunk from their duty to expose it.

Truth Jihad contains an important examination of different levels of behavior, and how these behaviors were triggered by the horror of the 9/11 attacks. It tells the story of one man, but it will teach you something that you need to know about yourself and your fellow citizens.

Jim Hogue is a radio journalist, farmer, and actor living in Calais VT. He performs as Ethan Allen.