The Closed Circle

Lorenzo Vidino is one of the leading experts on the Muslim Brotherhood in the West, and this latest volume is an important addition to the academic literature on the character and evolution of the Brotherhood, especially outside the Middle East-a subject of enduring significance for academic and policy-making communities. A meticulously researched and elegantly written book that goes behind the smoke screen to offer unique insights into an extraordinarily complex and deliberately elusive organization through carefully assembled vignettes of a heterogeneous group of members who journeyed from wide-eyed attraction to wistful disillusionment with the Brotherhood. Few are as qualified as Lorenzo Vidino to unpack the Muslim Brotherhood in the West. In The Closed Circle, he takes us into the life stories of actual members, their trajectories within the organization, and provides unique insights into the mechanisms of joining and leaving this secretive Islamist organization. It is absolutely essential reading for anyone wanting to understand the complexities of the largest Islamist movement in the West, where it is heading, and the major challenges ahead for Western liberal democracies. This book is the first of its kind. Well-conceived and highly original, The Closed Circle provides a new analytical framework for thinking about and conceptualizing the reasons for why people have chosen to leave the Muslim Brotherhood. Vidino's interviews reveal a patient organization that markets itself as moderate but sometimes acts like a sinister and dangerous cult. The Brotherhood requires subtle analysis, and Vidino provides just that-neither overstating its threat nor accepting its claims to be a benign fraternal order. An essential contribution to our understanding of Islamism in the West. Lorenzo Vidino is a distinguished scholar of the Muslim Brotherhood. In The Closed Circle, he provides the invaluable service of letting those who have left the movement speak for themselves. What they say should enlighten and alarm anyone who thinks the Brotherhood is moderate, a firewall against extremism, or genuinely committed to democratic pluralism. Policy makers need to read it-and then read it again.