ABSTRACT
Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda face the formidable challenge of selling a societal vision for which there is only a small demand throughout the Muslim world. Bin Laden’s austere and puritanical ideal society, ruled by authoritarian means, simply has no appeal for the vast majority of Muslims. Yet bin Laden and alQaeda have garnered significant popularity in the Muslim world, in the process becoming a strategic headache for the United States and its allies. The relative success they have enjoyed despite the unpopularity of their view of what constitutes a proper Muslim society can be attributed largely to their innovative and nimble information strategy. They have been consistently able to frame issues in a plausible and compelling way, and they have taken full advantage of the many missteps of their adversaries, especially the United States. In spite of these successes, al-Qaeda faces structural-ideological limits to its power: it has little chance of ever becoming more than a strategic gadfly, albeit one that can kill thousands of innocents.
