ABSTRACT
Since the early 1990s, numerous acts of violence around the world have been committed in the name of Islam-perhaps none so dramatic or far-reaching
in its global effects as the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and
Washington D.C. by militants associated with Usama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda
network. This act led to a renewed debate about the meaning and place of
violence and jihad in Islam. What does Islam say about violence and the
conditions under which it is permissible? How widespread is support for
this kind of violence among Muslims? What leads one to become a religious
militant? What is Al-Qaeda and how did it come about? These are all questions that we will explore in the present chapter, with a view to achiev-
ing a more nuanced understanding of contemporary Islamic radicalism.
We first need to explain how the ideology and methods of radical Isla-
mists differ from mainstream Islamism. While the point is often made-
correctly-that violent Islamists represent a small fringe minority of
Muslims, and even of Islamists, there are important points of connection
and intersection to be drawn with other forms of politicized Islam, and also
with various intellectual and theological debates that have been ongoing for some time within the Islamic tradition. We also need to explain the geo-
political circumstances that led to the genesis and evolution of the
contemporary global jihadist movement. To this end we will examine
the phenomenon of the so-called ‘‘Afghan-Arabs’’—citizens of Arab coun-
tries who traveled to Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation (1980-88)
to fight with the mujahideen against the USSR (see Chapter 6). Simulta-
neous and subsequent developments in Egypt and Algeria will also turn out
to be salient in terms of the emergence of a Jihadi movement global in scope.
