"He believes Americans need a more fact-based understanding of Islam, which requires the media to do a better job of reporting what Muslims think and say -- instead of papering over radical rhetoric. Once when a local reporter visited Al Haramain to write a piece on Ramadan, a co-worker refused to shake her hand, launched a defense of sorts of Algerian terrorists and lambasted a French policy that prohibited schoolgirls from wearing the hijab in class. The comments never made the story. Gartenstein-Ross writes, "And so, as I often did, the reporter chose not to acknowledge that a real clash of values existed here."

Islam's approach to homosexuality is another area that the left ignores in deference to multiculturalism. (Think of Bay Area liberals who voice outrage at the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy, but are silent about the Shariah policy on homosexuals -- 100 lashes or death.) Ditto the status of women.

Gartenstein-Ross also takes issue with those rose-colored-glass wearers who deny that there is any theological basis for Islamic extremism. "It's important to note that they do have an argument," he told me, if only to be able to engage them in argument and understand where they get their ideas.

Gartenstein-Ross is a strong storyteller, who enables the reader to feel the ineluctable draw to fanaticism, as well as the anguish and disillusionment that led him to support violent jihad, but ultimately reject it. He has no use for those who, a la Chomsky, pat themselves on the back for having the intellectual fortitude "to enter the minds of the likely perpetrators."

There are forces in this world that would kill these elites for the apostasy, but elites are so blinded with their sense of superiority over their political enemies -- like President Bush -- that they can't even see the dagger pointed at their throats. "