Publisher's Synopsis
As a journalist Souad Mekhennet has confronted some of the world's killers, unmasked Jihadi John, and gone deep into Muslim communities in the west. She wants to know why young Muslim men and women are rejecting their parents' dreams of economic betterment and personal freedom in favour of radical rebellion in the Middle East. The author is an independent, progressive Muslim woman who grew up in Germany. She can express of the sense of 'betweenness' that she feels, between Islam and the West, Sunni and Shia, Morocco and Turkey, between objective reporting and fellow feeling. Born to immigrant parents, her father is Moroccan and her mother Turkish, who came to Germany in search of a better life, she has experienced the benefits of growing up in a democracy but also how it feels to be treated like an outsider in the land of her birth.
