ABSTRACT
Although much has been written on the Internet’s interaction with, and impact on, militant jihadism (Hoffman 2006b; Weimann 2006), one aspect of that relationship that has been under-explored is the way in which the Internet contributes to a greater array of possibilities in which individuals might imagine themselves. Such a (re)imagination is central to the story of militant jihadism in the West, a phenomenon that depends upon a reconfiguration in the way in which individuals self-identify and subsequently resituate themselves. This chapter seeks some measure of redress. It looks, using the Netherlands as a case study, at the effect of the Internet, and the images therein, in the creation of a particular self-conception that is at the centre of militant jihadism in the West. ‘The revolution in communication technology in the 1990s . . . coincided with the rise of the global Salafi jihad’ (Sageman 2004: 158).
