ANY BOOK DEALING with the Muslim world is bound to be full of strange names and terms. This one is no different. Moreover, there are several codes of transliteration for both Arabic and Persian—from the academically precise to what is commonly used in the media. To make the book as reader-friendly as possible, I opted to use the popular spelling of names as they appear in most newspapers and magazines. For example, although the proper transliteration of the name would be Ussamah bin Ladin, I go along with the commonly used Osama bin Laden. Similarly, instead of the proper Umar Abd-al-Rahman, I use the familiar Omar Abdul Rahman, and instead of Tsaddam Hussayn, Saddam Hussein.
Whenever possible I translated terms, albeit losing precision, and left in the original language only commonly known terms such as jihad or organizational names such as al-Jamaah al-Islamiyah. For non-translated terms I also used the common transliterations—for example, jihad rather than gihad. This should help the reader to relate the story told here to unfolding world events.