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By the time of Arafat's homecoming, Yusuf had pretty much returned to his former self, moved into his own place downtown, and had three small children. This chapter also describes the marriage between Yusuf's brother-in-law, Muhammad, and Yusuf's sister, Nuha.

This chapter describes how Abu–Surur killed Haim Nachmani, and his condition before he committed the crime. According to Suhail al–Hindi, Hamza and his two cousins, Mahmud and Nasir carried out the plan to kill Nachmani. Hamza and his cousins walked away from the scene with Nachmani's pistol and briefcase full of intelligence documents. Hamza became a full-fledged member of the Battalions and the “most wanted man in the West Bank”.

This chapter recounts the last words of Muhammad Hasan al–Hindi, the third guy who stepped in front of the camera in The Giants video. In the video, he tells that his mission is to set out on a “martyrdom operation against an Israeli bus” if Israel refuses to meet the Giants' demand that it release a number of detainees. He then sends greetings to the members of the Battalions who welcomed him and the other Giants in the West Bank. Upon Rushdi's request, al–Hindi offers a special word to the Cubs of Hamas, the youngsters in the movement, before reiterating that military action is not for everyone. In the end, al–Hindi requested that the mourning ceremony be a wedding party so that there would be a celebration in Paradise.

This chapter presents Suhail al–Hindi's descriptions of his younger brother, Muhammad, particularly in the martyr book he wrote for him after his death. It was in prison that Muhammad met a youth who would change his life forever. Suhail's writing discusses his brother's friendship with Yasir an–Nimruti, a relation he defines in the terms of 'aqida. After “graduating” from prison, Muhammad enrolled in the department of mathematics at al–Azhar University in Gaza, where he quickly became a leader in the Islamist movement.

The family home of Muhammad Rushdi is located in al–'Arub, a little village not far from Bethlehem. After Muhammad's death, his brother said, the family had been besieged with visitors wanting to offer their condolences. Everyone had heard of Muhammad 'Aziz Rushdi and they printed as many as twenty thousand martyr cards as mementoes for the mourners. For Muslims, the greatest thing that one can wish for is to be in Paradise. Rushdi wanted this all the time. It was also a common charge made by Islamists that the Jews and Christians had changed their scriptures to hold back the advance of Islam.

This chapter documents the views of Muhammad Rushdi's brother regarding the path that Muhammad took. The brother said that there several reasons that would lead a guy like Muhammad Rushdi to take the decision to be a fighter. He spoke of Muhammad as being bored of prison. And like any good Muslim, he wanted to go to Paradise. There was also the occupation. People watched their friends being beaten or killed, and he wanted to save them. He wanted to do good things for the people.

This chapter describes the exchange of ideas between Rushdi and Abu–Surur, with Abu–Surur this time having the role of the interviewer. It is unclear why, here at the end of The Giants, Rushdi has seen fit to shroud himself and assume another identity called al–Hajj Barakat. At the end of the interview, Rushdi begins arranging the room for another presentation. To the accompaniment of Hamas anthems, the three Giants choreographed a bizarre dance of weapons as if they were Sufis in trance. They gazed at their weapons as though they were ritual objects. They were everything they needed to be as they headed off to kill many people.

This chapter describes the operation of the Giants Abu–Surur, 'Uthman, and al–Hindi on July 1, 1993 when they boarded Egged bus #25 on French Hill. Besides their weapons, they carried with them a leaflet demanding the release of Sheikh 'Abdul Karim Obeid. According to the bus driver, David Yom–Tov, Abu–Surur pointed his gun at him, and David jumped at him but not before Abu–Surur hit him in the thigh. The double bus lost control, as Abu–Surur and al–Hindi fled, leaving behind their bombs and also 'Uthman, who was shot in the head but managed to survive in Hadassah Hospital. They managed to find a getaway car. They fired at the soldiers and tossed hand grenades at them, but the grenades failed to explode and the soldiers opened fire. The car went out of control, before colliding with a tree and blowing up. The bodies of Abu–Surur and al–Hindi were charred beyond recognition.

The Jewish population of the Land of Israel more or less doubled in size between 1808 and 1840. A significant segment of the immigrants were disciples of the Vilna Ga’on, who undertook an organized immigration effort beginning no later than 1806. Many were motivated by messianism, but some came in an effort to escape hardship in Europe. Many settled in the Galilee, in and around Safed, while others came to Jerusalem; there was a degree of rivalry between the groups (respectively led by Israel of Shklov and Menahem Mendel of Shklov). Immigration was adversely affected by recurring epidemics, natural calamities, poverty, and political instability. It increased substantially during the relatively enlightened and stable reign of Muhammad Ali, an Egyptian who took control of the Land of Israel from the Ottomans in 1831 and remained in power through the 1830s. The Montefiore Census of 1839 shows that nearly half of the Jewish population of the Land of Israel that year were under the age of twenty.

Stories about the antemortal existence, conception, gestation, and birth of the Prophet Muhammad, absent from the Qur’an, began to circulate in the decades after his death. They served a political purpose, to glorify Muhammad and Islam in the ideological competition, first with Arabian paganism and then with the world faiths (chiefly Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and, even more important, Christianity) that confronted Muslims during and after the Arab expansion. In contrast to certain other religious founders, the fetal Muhammad is never represented as speaking or acting, and indeed he is essentially devoid of human personality. He is a symbol, representing Islam’s claim to be the final and definitive revelation from God and its parallel assertion of universal political sovereignty.

This chapter presents a summary of the discussions in the preceding chapters. The image of Islam in the West from the Middle Ages to the present contains four enduring elements: religiously, Muhammad was seen as either the Antichrist or a fallen Lucifer-like figure; personally, he was a flawed human being, unable or unwilling to contain his sexuality; politically, he was either a major leader who united the desert tribes or a greedy despot; he was viewed as an original source of wisdom of the East for some and the last and greatest prophet of divine revelation for others. In recent times, two aspects — violence and reciprocity — have come to characterize the dominant image of Islam in the West: violence in the widespread prevalence of targeted killings, riots, bombings, and warfare that have devastated parts of the world; reciprocity in that Islam is no longer the passive tableau on which Westerners fashion an image. The Western image of Islam has become the subject of constant modification based on sustained, complex, almost instantaneous global contact.

This chapter examines the Islamic belief that the Koran (Qur'an) was authored by Allah and revealed to Muhammad via the angel Gabriel, and dissects the alleged ‘proofs’ for Koranic divinity. The chapter presents nine arguments against this belief, among which are the Koran's internal contradictions, obvious dependence on Judaism, and Jewish and Christian traditions, factual errors, superstitious beliefs, and inclusion of unethical and immoral teachings. The chapter discusses the danger posed to democratic societies and values by fundamentalist Muslims who seek to impose Qur'anic and Sharia law and values on non‐Muslim societies, while noting that some Muslims advocate democracy and religious freedom. The chapter discusses the absurd claim of some Muslims that the Koran contains scientific knowledge that was not discovered in the West until recently, and the belief in Koranic inimitability (Ijaz al Koran), and analyzes the psychology of Muslims who make irrational claims and profess irrational beliefs.

This chapter traces the ongoing debates about Sufism in relation to changing notions of orthodoxy, focusing on the new Salafi movement of Muhammad ʻAbduh and Muhammad Rashid Rida. As a part of their platform to reorder Muslim society, this movement called upon Muslims to break with the older patronage networks organized around the tariqa and the sayyid. Their goals could be harmonized for a time: both wanted to restrict Sufism to the elite once more and promoted extending a proper understanding of Shariʻa to a widening circle of readers. There were tensions inherent in this “harmony,” however, and they led inevitably to the collapse of the sayyid-led reforms and to the genesis of an increasingly bifurcated public sphere in the Netherlands Indies. Going forward, the various strands of the “modernist” Muslim movement will seek to take the lead under the aegis of the Office for Native Affairs.

The prophet Muhammad served as a model for those entering into marriage and celibacy is rejected as a human invention, although the Islamic tradition embodies exceptions with Sufism and its more negative attitudes toward the human body. Sufi groups used celibacy as a form of social protest. There is also a relation between forced celibacy and political power during the medieval period. In addition to certain Sufi groups, eunuchs represented another exception to the general negative Islamic attitude toward celibacy.

This chapter discusses the origins and development of political authority in the Islamic world. From the laylat al-qadr, the “night of power” in which the Qur'an symbolically “came down” from God, to the death of the Prophet, Muslim affairs were governed by the special authority of that prophetic-revelatory event, and it remains the primary paradigm of political authority in Islam. Muhammad was a religious, political, and military leader who founded a new form of community, an umma, that was both spiritual and worldly in nature. The development of this new community, which defined itself in terms of faith rather than national or tribal boundaries, marked a transition from polytheism to monotheism, and was ultimately shaped by both Arab tribal bonds and Persian monarchic systems.

This chapter deals with the life and career of Muhammad. In Muslim belief, the religion of Islam is based on divine revelation and represents a divinely willed and established institution. In the perspective of history, the origins of Islam can be traced back to the prophetic career of Muhammad, its historical founder in the first third of the seventh century. Born around 570 in Mecca, a town in a rocky valley of the Hijaz—the northwestern quarter of the Arabian Peninsula—Muhammad began his prophetic proclamations circa 610. He appeared not as a mystic or visionary but as a prophet with the mission to convert the Quraysh, his fellow Arab tribesmen who had settled there. The discussions cover Muhammad's life from ca. 570 to 610; Muhammad's career in Mecca from ca. 610 to 622 and in Medina from 622 to 632; and Muhammad as a political leader.

This chapter discusses the historical origin and development, religious scholarship, political elements, and legacy of the Qur'an. The Qur'an, the holy book of Islam, is the most recent of the major sacred scriptures to have appeared in human history. It includes the prophetic proclamations of Muhammad (570–632) in Arabic, collected after his death in definitive written form and meticulously transmitted through the centuries. More than a billion Muslims around the globe consider the Qur'an to be the eternal word of God, who “sent down” the scripture as his final divine revelation and commissioned Muhammad to be the last prophet to proclaim his divine will for all of humanity to follow.

This chapter considers the complex relationship between gender and Islamic political thought through a few snapshots: the Qur'an, female contemporaries of Muhammad, medieval Islamic scholarship, and modern Muslim women. Several women are mentioned in the Qur'an, some of whom demonstrate a strong independent spirit. They are held responsible for their own salvation, apart from their husbands or male relatives. The independent personalities of women who appear in the Qur'an are reflected in the stories of early Muslim women as recorded in Islamic history. Muhammad's wives played key political roles during the lifetime of Muhammad and the early generations of Islam. In the modern period, “Muslim women” as an abstract, essentialized entity has become a measuring stick for “progress” as well as an embodiment of “authentic” Islamic values.