Because They Hate: A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns America

Brigitte Gabriel combines memoir with analysis of the social, political, and religious factors that shaped the current Middle East situation. In 1975, at age ten, Gabriel was living in Southern Lebanon when militant Muslims from across the Middle East entered the country and declared jihad against Lebanese Christians. As the only Christian-influenced country in the region, Lebanon became the first front in what Gabriel describes as a worldwide jihad of fundamentalist Islam against non-Muslim peoples. For seven years, Gabriel and her parents lived in an underground bomb shelter without running water, electricity, or adequate food. Gabriel presents this account as a political analysis framed through personal experience. She argues that the United States faces the same threat from fundamentalist Islamic theology that Lebanon did, warning that radical Islam seeks domination of all non-Muslim countries. Gabriel contends that the West lacks understanding of Middle Eastern thinking and has consistently underestimated the single-minded pursuit of fundamentalist Islam's goals over the past thirty years. The book outlines Gabriel's personal story alongside the history, social movements, and religious divisions underlying this conflict.