ABSTRACT
Al-Qaeda is a transnational network of ‘ism’ rather than a traditional highly centralised and tightly controlled terrorist organisation. Its worldwide network of networks is bound together with a shared ideology, strategic goals, modus operandi and fanatical hatred of the USA and other Western countries, Israel, and the government of the regimes of Muslim countries which Al-Qaeda’s leaders accuse of being ‘apostates’ on the grounds that they ‘betray’ the ‘true Islam’ as defi ned by bin Laden.1
