In No god, but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam, Reza Aslan argued that modern Islamic terrorism was a symptom of a struggle for the soul of Islam among believers in which the West is more of prop than a player.

Aslan’s book is a well-written introduction to Islam’s history and future — a very good and easy read. His point accords with a meaty article by Lawrence Wright in the New Yorker about Dr. Fadl, an Egyptian surgeon and contemporary of Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden’s #2 guy.

Dr. Fadl also wrote the book, literally, that paved the way for today’s jihad.

Twenty years ago, he wrote two of the most important books in modern Islamist discourse; Al Qaeda used them to indoctrinate recruits and justify killing.

But now Dr. Fadl, sitting in an Egyptian prison, has reconsidered his theological arguments that justified so much mayhem and has a new book that says true Muslims are prohibited from committing aggression.

Fadl’s ideas carry weight and his reversal has set off an ideological war.

The roots of this ideological war within Al Qaeda go back forty years, to 1968, when two precocious teen-agers met at Cairo University’s medical school. Zawahiri, a student there, was then seventeen, but he was already involved in clandestine Islamist activity. Although he was not a natural leader, he had an eye for ambitious, frustrated youths like him who believed that destiny was whispering in their ear.

1968 again. What a rotten year that’s turned out to be. The New Yorker piece is really too long to excerpt. It’s all online; print it out and have a read.