My Friend the Fanatic ─ Travels With a Radical Islamist

A nation once synonymous with tolerance, Indonesia, the fourth-most populated country in the world and its most populous Muslim country, now finds itself in the midst of a profound shift toward radical Islam. Sadanand Dhume, a Princeton-educated Indian atheist with a fondness for literary fiction and an interest in economic development, travels across Indonesia to find out how a society goes from broad inclusiveness to outspoken intolerance in the space of a generation. His traveling companion is Harry Nurdi, a young Islamist who hero-worships the late Osama bin Laden and sympathizes with the Taliban. Their travels span mosques and discotheques, prison cells and dormitories, sacred volcanoes and temple ruins. Over time, they forge an uneasy friendship that offers a firsthand look into the crucible of radical Islam's future.

My Friend the Fanatic is the story of an alternately disturbing, amusing, and poignant journey that illuminates one of the most pressing issues of our time.

Sadanand Dhume is a Washington, DCbased writer and a nonresident fellow at the Asia Society. His articles have been published in theWall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Commentary, and Foreign Policy. He has appeared on CNN, PBS, NPR, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Dhume holds graduate degrees from Princeton and Columbia and a bachelor’s from the University of Dehli.My Friend the Fanatic is his first book.