The May 2010 edition of Britain’s leading intellectual magazine Prospect has run a three-page excerpt that its editorial staff cleverly adapted from a chapter in Dining with al-Qaeda. In it I tell of my encounter in Saudi Arabia with a missionary from al-Qaeda’s camps in Afghanistan. Editor David Goodhart sent me a copy of the…

PROLOGUE I have lived and worked in the Middle East for more than three decades, and this book collects what I feel to be my most compelling insights from journeys and meetings in some two dozen countries. I have visited many of these states repeatedly, first as a traveller, then as a student of the…

CONTENTS Prologue Map of the Middle East 1. Mr. Q, I LOVE YOU Oriental Studies Meets the Middle East 2. IT’S A FINE LINE Journalism on the Road from Damascus 3. THE PLOT IN THE CONSPIRACY Spies in the Syria-Lebanon-Palestine Triangle 4. HUNTING FOR SCAPEGOATS Foreign interference and Misrule in Lebanon 5. A PILGRIMAGE TO…