Jihad in the City: Militant Islam and Contentious Politics in

Jihad in the CityMilitant Islam and Contentious Politics in Tripoli\nAuthor(s): Raphal Lefvre\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom\nImprint: Cambridge University Press\nISBN-13: 9781108426268, 978-1108426268\nSynopsis\nTawhid was a militant Islamist group which implemented Islamic law at gunpoint in the Lebanese city of Tripoli during the 1980s. In retrospect, some have called it 'the first ISIS-style Emirate'. Drawing on two hundred interviews with Islamist fighters and their mortal enemies, as well as on a trove of new archival material, Raphal Lefvre provides a comprehensive account of this Islamist group. He shows how they featured religious ideologues determined to turn Lebanon into an Islamic Republic, yet also included Tripolitan rebels of all stripes, neighbourhood strongmen with scores to settle, local subalterns seeking social revenge as well as profit-driven gangsters, who each tried to steer Tawhid's exercise of violence to their advant.