Jihad The Trail of Political Islam (French: Jihad: Expansion et Déclin de l"Islamisme) is a book by French author and scholar Gilles Kepel

Gilles Kepel

Gilles Kepel is a French political scientist, specialist of the Islam and contemporary Arab world. He is Professor at the Institute of Political Studies in Paris and member of the Institut Universitaire de France....

. It was originally published in French in 2000 by Gallimard, with English translations by Anthony F. Roberts from Belknap Press

Harvard University Press

Harvard University Press is a publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University, and focused on academic publishing. In 2005, it published 220 new titles. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses. Its current director is William P...

 in 2002 and I.B. Tauris

I.B. Tauris

I. B. Tauris is an independent publishing house with offices in London and New York.-History:I.B.Tauris was founded in 1983. Its declared strategy was to fill the perceived gap between trade publishing houses and university presses—that is, to publish serious but accessible works on international...

 in 2006.

The book provides a detailed examination of the expansion and decline of what he terms the doomed extremist ideology of the Jihadist movement since the 1960s. The author explains the attraction of Islamism

Islamism

Islamism also , lit., "Political Islam" is set of ideologies holding that Islam is not only a religion but also a political system. Islamism is a controversial term, and definitions of it sometimes vary...

to humiliated and faltering segments of the Muslim population and outlines its severe shortcomings.