ABSTRACT
The twentieth century saw two world wars followed by a Cold War and the fall of the Soviet Union. The advent of the twenty-fi rst century seemed to promise peace of a kind that had not been seen in some long while. But that hope proved illusory. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, in New York and Washington, in Indonesia in 2002, Spain in 2004, England in 2005, Boston in 2013, the bombing of a Russian airliner in 2015, followed weeks later by deadly terrorist attacks in Paris, Mali, and San Bernardino-all these, with the prospect of more to come, have awakened people in the Western world to a new threat to their peace and security. That threat extends to people around the globe, and comes not only from the best-known groups-al-Qaeda (Arabic for “the base”) and ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria)—but from other more obscure organizations as well.
