Studium Terroru - dla "Islamistow"...

IP: *.cm-upc.chello.se 24.10.01, 19:33


www.biu.ac.il/SOC/besa/publications/steinberg-WMD/steinberg-1.htm#4
    • Gość: # Studium Terroru IP: *.cm-upc.chello.se 24.10.01, 20:39
      www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/pgtrpt/2000/index.cfm?docid=2450
      • Gość: #### Re: Studium Terroru 25.10.01 IP: *.cm-upc.chello.se 26.10.01, 02:14
        www.idf.il/english/announcements/2001/october/25.stm#2
    • Gość: #### Re: Studium Terroru - PFLP IP: *.cm-upc.chello.se 26.10.01, 00:52
      Government: PFLP chiefs ordered Ze'evi murder
      By Arieh O'Sullivan


      JERUSALEM (October 25) - The two top commanders of the Popular Front for the
      Liberation of Palestine ordered the assassination of tourism minister Rehavam
      Ze'evi, the government said yesterday.

      PFLP secretary-general Ahmed Sadat and his deputy Ahad Olma recruited a
      resident of Beit Rima, north of Ramallah, to lead the assassination squad,
      according to a statement from the Prime Minister's Office. The PFLP has claimed
      responsibility for Ze'evi's murder.

      According to the IDF, Sadat is the leader of an extreme faction in the PFLP and
      has "stood out as the one directing the organization's terrorist attacks, along
      with Olma."

      Sadat was elected chairman on October 3 to replace Mustafa Zibri (Abu Ali
      Mustafa), who was killed by Israeli forces in August. He was the most senior
      official of a Palestinian organization killed in accordance with the
      government's policy of targeting terrorist leaders, and the PFLP vowed to
      avenge his death.

      Israel is continuing its search for Sadat and Olma, who have gone underground.

      Security officials said the PFLP tapped Majdi Ghimawi to recruit the assassins,
      Ahmed Qouran and Basel a-Rahman Asmar, both from El-Bireh. Ghimawi also
      recruited Muhammad Fahmi Ghimawi of Beit Rima and Salah Alawi from Eizariya.

      They were captured, one last week right after the assassination, and the second
      in the Beit Rima incursion. They were apprehended by members of the police
      Gideonim special unit and General Security Service agents. A court-ordered
      injunction had banned the publication of the suspects' identities until
      yesterday, after the raid on Beit Rima.

      From the interrogation of Muhammad Ghimawi, 35, security agents pieced together
      the anatomy of Ze'evi's assassination.

      According to a detailed report cited in the statement by the Prime Minister's
      Office, two weeks before the assassination, Qouran told members of his gang
      their mission was to assassinate a senior Israeli official. The cell then
      rented a commercial vehicle to be used for their escape. They were also given a
      submachine gun and pistols with silencers.

      The investigation revealed the relative ease with which the assassination team
      collected intelligence about Ze'evi and then carried out the killing. Ze'evi
      habitually stayed at Jerusalem's Hyatt Regency Hotel.

      Ghimawi told his interrogators it was his job to wait for Qouran and Asmar
      outside the hotel and drive the getaway vehicle. He was armed, in the event of
      detection.

      The day before the assassination, cell leader Qouran booked a room at the Hyatt
      under an alias. On the morning of the murder, he instructed Ghimawi to wait at
      a pre-arranged location near the hotel at 6:30. They planned to speed off to
      Ramallah after the murder.

      Qouran told Ghimawi he shot Ze'evi, Ghimawi told interrogators. He said Qouran
      told him he had seen Ze'evi in the dining room eating breakfast. Qouran and
      Asmar went back to the eighth floor, where Ze'evi's room was located, and
      waited behind a door of the stairwell.

      "A few minutes later, Minister Ze'evi passed by, headed to his room," Ghimawi
      said, according to the statement issued by the Prime Minister's Office. "As he
      was opening his door, Qouran approached and called out to him. Their eyes met
      and Qouran fired at him from point blank range with his pistol, which had a
      silencer attached to it."

      Qouran waited to see Ze'evi fall to the floor, bleeding profusely. Doctors said
      he was hit once in the eye and in the neck. A third bullet missed.

      Ghimawi said Asmar was a few meters behind Qouran the entire time and witnessed
      the event from beginning to end. The pair fled to the waiting car and traveled
      to Eizariya, where Qouran, Asmar, and Ghimawi hid in Alawi's house.

      Later, Qouran and Asmar succeeded in sneaking into the Palestinian Authority,
      but Alawi and Ghimawi were captured, security officials said. The two were
      caught with the Scorpion submachine gun, one pistol and two silencers.

      A forensic examination determined this was not the pistol used to shoot Ze'evi.
      They did discover, however, that it had been used in a number of murders
      committed by the PFLP in the late 1980s.

      The assassins Qouran and Asmar are still at large, and the pistol used in the
      killing has not been recovered. Israel has given the Palestinian Authority
      their names and demanded they be arrested. Some of those arrested in Beit Rima
      are now being questioned about the possible involvement in the assassination.
    • Gość: ! Re: Studium Terroru - Arabskie kłamstwa ! IP: *.cm-upc.chello.se 26.10.01, 01:56
      www.idf.il/english/announcements/2001/august/20.stm
    • Gość: ... Is There an Islamist Internationale? IP: *.cm-upc.chello.se 26.10.01, 22:49
      Is There an Islamist Internationale?
      Reuven Paz
      ICT Academic Director



      Common Grounds for Cooperation between Islamist Terrorist Groups and their
      Implications for Western Security and American Foreign Policy

      Introduction
      Many researchers and analysts, not to mention reporters and politicians, seem
      to view the development of Islamist terrorism over the past decade as a kind
      of “new terrorism.” Indeed, the prospects of cooperation between a variety of
      Islamist groups and movements seem to have been improved in the past decade,
      and particularly in the last two years. There are a number of reasons for this,
      of which the fall of the Soviet Union is probably the most important. The
      breakup of the USSR was seen through the eyes of the Islamists as a victory
      over “the Kingdom of Evil”—a victory that symbolized a long-range historical
      phase and a foretaste of the future global victory of Islam and the Muslims.

      Ten years after the success of the Islamic revolution in Iran, the war against
      the Soviet Union was seen by the Islamists as the next stage of the global war
      between Islam and Western culture. The Iranian Revolution had itself provided a
      revolutionary Islamic model for the Sunnis as well as Shi’ites, even though the
      Sunni Islamic groups had many reservations about its content. The fall of the
      Soviet Union not only symbolized victory, but also served as a reminder of the
      existence of a “global conspiracy against Islam.”

      After the fall of the Soviet Union the United States remained the sole force in
      this conspiracy against Islam. The U.S. is perceived by the Islamists as the
      spearhead of Western culture and modernization that threatens the Islamic
      world, not necessarily by military force or political colonialism and
      influence, but by its cultural influence.

      The Islamists saw the fall of the Soviet Union as a direct result of the Soviet
      defeat in Afghanistan at the hands of Islamic warriors. The masses of Arab
      volunteers recruited to fight the Soviets in the Afghan conflict later sought
      to maintain the momentum of victory in other places. Hence, the Afghan conflict
      led to the opening of Islamic and Islamist fronts in various local and national
      disputes with religious overtones: Bosnia, Albania, Kosovo, Chechnya, Dagestan
      and Kashmir. This involvement has led many observers in recent years to view
      the phenomenon of “Afghan Arabs” as a kind of Islamist Internationale, similar
      in many ways to the International Brigades of Socialist and Communist
      volunteers in the civil war in Spain in the 1930s.





      The rise of Islamist Terrorism

      Over the past decade Islamist involvement in terrorism and political violence
      in various Arab and Islamic states, as well as in the West or against Western
      targets has been on the rise. This trend has gone hand-in-hand with a trend of
      increasing destructiveness of terror attacks: the use of more powerful car
      bombs, suicide bombings, massacres of innocent civilians or tourists, and
      attacks against multi-story buildings in order to cause massive damages and
      casualties. This type of terrorism has been used against both local regimes in
      the Middle East and Western—mainly American—interests.

      Major developments in Islamist terrorism in the past decade include

      Islamist terrorism for the first time in the United States, perpetrated by
      Egyptian Islamists. In the late 1990s these militants cooperated with Arab
      Afghan elements.
      The consolidation of the Jihad Front around Osama bin Ladin’s Al-Qa`idah
      organization in Afghanistan. This attracted several small Islamist groups to
      join him in order to benefit from his financial aid, the training facilities in
      Afghanistan and the hospitality of the Taliban regime. This consolidation made
      possible the attacks against American interests in Saudi Arabia, the bombing of
      two American embassies in East Africa, and the attempts to carry out terrorist
      operations in the U.S. and other places on the occasion of the Millennium.
      A significant increase in casualties caused by Islamist terrorism. This can be
      illustrated by the attacks on the American military base in Khobar, Saudi
      Arabia and the two American embassies in East Africa, as well as the Israeli
      embassy and the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires and mass killing of
      tourists in Luxor, Egypt. In the Middle East, high-casualty attacks included a
      series of massive suicide bombings by Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad
      in Israel. Mention should also be made of massacres of civilians at the hands
      of Islamists in Algeria. We should add to these the many similar attempted
      terrorist attacks that were prevented by the security services in various
      countries.
      A shift in focus from religious and nationalist struggles in individual Arab or
      Muslim states to the global scope of Islam. This international perspective has
      developed gradually throughout the 1990s, and has led to better organizational
      ties and cooperation between groups.
      A major increase in fund raising for Islamist organizations and movements,
      mainly those indulging in both terrorist and social activity, where it is
      sometimes impossible to separate the financing of the various fields of
      activity in order to curtail the ability of such groups to “juggle” the
      accounts. There has also been an increase in financial support of Arab and
      Muslim governments to various Islamic groups or projects in an attempt to gain
      control over the Islamists, or alternately to influence, through them, various
      sectors of the population.
      It should be noted that the Islamist terrorist activity has taken place against
      a background of slow but steady decline in popular support for some of the
      Islamist groups, such as GIA (Armed Islamic Group) in Algeria, The Islamic
      Jihad and al-Gama`at al-Islamiyyah in Egypt, Hamas in the Palestinian
      Authority, and the Jihadi groups in the Yemen. The loss of popular support is
      inter alia the result of massive terrorism, which led governments to apply
      heavy pressure on large sectors of the population suspected of being affiliated
      with Islamist groups or sympathetic towards them.
      An improvement of the ability of Arab Muslim governments to recruit popular
      support for their counter-terrorist efforts. In most cases Western—primarily
      American—encouragement allowed governments to crack down on Islamist terrorist
      groups without the fear of being labeled anti-Islamic.
      Islam and the West
      One important factor has in fact not changed since the beginning of the
      Islamist revival in the Arab world in the 1970s: the difficulty of Muslim
      populations to cope with modernization and with Western culture. This has
      resulted in a rise in the popularity of Islamic and Islamist groups and
      individuals among the Muslim communities in the West. This popularity is due to
      the rapid growth of these communities by natural growth and immigration over
      the past three decades, aided by the development of tension and hatred of
      foreigners in many of the host countries, particularly in Europe.
      There is a growing sense of insecurity on the part of Muslims living in Western
      societies, brought about by social and psychological processes that led to the
      return to Islam as a kind of a shield and a source of identity. A visitor to
      the Islamic bookstores of London, Paris, New Jersey, or Michigan would find
      that most of the religious doctrinal literature sold or distributed relate to
      the issues of “How to preserve Muslim life in Western society and culture.”

      These processes increased the quest for an organized religious society, in
      which the Islamic organizations play a role in helping communities to cope with
      the threat of Western culture—a threat, in the eyes of many Muslims, to
      • Gość: ... Re: Is There an Islamist Internationale? cd2 IP: *.cm-upc.chello.se 26.10.01, 22:53
        These processes increased the quest for an organized religious society, in
        which the Islamic organizations play a role in helping communities to cope with
        the threat of Western culture—a threat, in the eyes of many Muslims, to the
        Muslim mind, soul and cultural values. Similar tensions exist in the Arab and
        Muslim world itself and are at the root of the popularity of the Islamist
        groups there as well. But in the Western world this sense of threat has only
        increased over time.

        The fundamentalist, radical messages of modern Islam, the most political
        religion on earth, has gained a following among Muslim populations in the West.
        In many cases this has occurred with the help of the Western governments
        themselves, through their inability or unwillingness differentiate between
        social welfare or educational activities and potentially violent political
        activities. Western democracies—particularly the more culturally liberal among
        them—have thus unwittingly leant themselves to the cause of the Islamists, for
        better or worse. For many of the violent Islamist groups, their Islamic
        projects, publications and welfare services serve as the backbone of support
        for their terrorist activities. Such services aid in recruitment, fund raising,
        training, communications, connections within the group and with other groups,
        distribution of political, doctrinal, and ideological messages, publishing
        pamphlets, assistance from foreign governments, etc. Part of this activity is
        sometimes sheltered by a kind of “untouchable” legitimate organizational
        complex, in the form of social and welfare associations. In some countries,
        particularly in the UK, Germany and Scandinavia, these organizations benefit
        from generous financial support from the authorities.

        In general, over the past decade the freedom of operation of most of the
        Islamist groups has greatly improved outside of their homelands. This relative
        freedom did not decrease the basic hostility to the West, particularly the
        U.S., but may even have led to increased animosity.

        Wahhabi-Takfiri Jihad
        Under the influence of the “Arab Afghan” phenomenon there has also been an
        ideological consolidation of Wahhabi-Takfiri Jihadi ideology and rhetoric that
        resulted in two main developments:

        A shift in the struggle, mainly through massive terrorism, from the heart of
        the Arab World into the “Wild West” of Central Asia and to Western countries or
        Western interests in the region.
        Better cooperation between various groups and organizations. In the Middle East
        examples are Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and to some extent Hizballah.
        On the international scene one can see this in the case of the Egyptian,
        Pakistani, Kashmiri, Algerian, Jordanian, Yemeni, and Sunni Lebanese groups.
        The response of the West under American leadership was to improve international
        cooperation in counter-terrorism. However this has not really helped to
        confront the recent developments. For most of the past decade cooperation in
        counter-terrorism between the Arab states did not exist, and only during the
        past year has such cooperation begun to bear fruit.
        The development of the Islamist perspective
        The Islamist or Jihadi terrorism is an extension of the more radical aspects of
        the Islamic revival. This revival was a result of the inability of Islamic
        societies to cope with the modernization presented to them by Western
        civilization and culture. It was encouraged by regimes unable to merge Islamic
        social, political, and cultural perceptions with the “imported” Western secular
        culture.

        The outcome was the development of a doctrine of Jihad, which offered a
        solution to the clash of civilizations. The opposing forces were presented as
        Islam, as represented by the movements of the Islamic revival, on the one hand
        and the processes of modernization, as represented by Western culture on the
        other hand. The incursion of Western culture was perceived as being aided and
        abetted by national, royalist, socialist or Marxist regimes in the Arab and
        Muslim World.

        One of the greatest successes of the Islamist groups was their ability to
        present the ideology of this inexorable clash as true and genuine Islam, and
        hence to attract relatively large proportions of the Muslim public.

        The next stage was the Islamist movements’ attempt to crystallize Muslim public
        opinion around the notion that the Muslims are at constant war. This war is
        seen as part of an eternal global struggle between Islam and its adherents and
        a long string of enemies throughout the history of Islam. The 20th Century gave
        many Muslims a sense of permanent retreat in which they were besieged by the
        threatening Western culture and modernization. The immediate outcome was
        secularization and the decline of Islamic political and social culture as a way
        of life, as it should have been according to the Islamic teachings. The
        superiority of the West gave this war a sense of desperation, causing it to be
        presented as a war of self-defense, with Jihad the only response.

        But Jihad does not mean only military conflict. This was a war of cultures, and
        therefore it has been conducted mainly for the minds of those Muslims attracted
        to the new perceptions. The feeling of being involved in a war of self-defense
        led to a sense of being under siege by the both the West and the secular Arab
        regimes. Most of the Islamist movements succeeded in convincing their followers
        that they were threatened everywhere in the world. Anyone who reads the
        collection of Sayyed Qutb’s letters in the book “America from the inside”
        (Amrika min al-Dakhil) in the early 1950s(2), can easily trace the origins of
        the sense of global war that eventually led to Islamist terrorism, violence,
        and hatred in the form of Jihad.

        The next stage was the formation of Jihad groups aimed at the creation of a
        proud new generation of Islamist warriors, who saw themselves as defenders of
        Islam in this global war—a war in which they were persecuted and threatened
        from all sides.

        One of the questions we should ask ourselves is “who threatens whom? And who
        terrorizes whom?” Is the admittedly extant tactical threat of Islamist
        terrorism to Western societies greater than the threat of Western modernization
        and culture to certain Muslim publics? Was the American intensive assistance to
        the Afghan Mujahedin (the former partners of Osama bin Laden) really meant to
        save them from the “Evil Empire” of the Soviet Union? If so, then why not allow
        them to establish a true Islamic State? Why did the Americans bombard the Serbs
        in Kosovo, but totally ignore the Islamists in Chechnya, who fight the
        successors of “the Evil Empire”?

        The Western mind can find the answers through the logic of political culture
        and interests. But, the Islamist political culture, which in Islamic eyes is an
        integral part of religious rulings and perceptions, cannot.

        And thus we come to the last phase of the development of these Islamist
        perceptions. The fall of the Soviet Union in 1990 led many Western societies to
        view Islamist terrorism as a new threat to the free world. The result is that
        the United States, the leading element of Western civilization, is on the verge
        of adopting the Islamic perception of the Global War.

        For Muslims, the wars against the Christian Crusaders are the archetype of the
        Islamic Jihad—a war on clear religious principles with no distinction between
        religion and politics. This perception was revived in the last decades by all
        the Islamist movements. When Osama bin Ladin styles his front “The Front of
        Jihad against the Crusaders and the Jews” it is obvious to the entire Muslim
        world what he means
        • Gość: ... Re: Is There an Islamist Internationale? cd3 IP: *.cm-upc.chello.se 26.10.01, 22:55
          For Muslims, the wars against the Christian Crusaders are the archetype of the
          Islamic Jihad—a war on clear religious principles with no distinction between
          religion and politics. This perception was revived in the last decades by all
          the Islamist movements. When Osama bin Ladin styles his front “The Front of
          Jihad against the Crusaders and the Jews” it is obvious to the entire Muslim
          world what he means. Furthermore, such a perception evokes, not only for his
          immediate followers but also wider Islamic circles, a vision of a better future
          in which they emerge victorious.

          Bin Ladin’s success in marketing this notion not only lends legitimacy to
          terrorism against the West, but also opens the door to the feelings of hatred
          rooted in social and economic ills. This closes the circle and brings us to the
          roots of the Islamist violence: once again we find the inability to cope with
          Western modernization.

          The roots of Islamic fundamentalism lie in the search for the glorious past of
          Islam in the Middle Ages. The source of the phenomenon lies in the pursuit of
          immediate solutions to revive this glorious past. The continuous sense of
          retreat during the second half of the past century led to impatience, which in
          turn led to violence. The doctrines of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Arab World
          or of Maududi’s Jamaah Islamiyyah in India and the non-Arabic Muslim World have
          lost their attraction for part of Islamic societies. Where these traditional
          doctrines stressed long-range social revolution, what people seek today is more
          immediate improvement in their social conditions. Thus many readily adopted the
          notion of Jihad and the clash of civilizations.





          Islamist Terrorism in the 1990s

          This quite long survey of the development of Islamist ideology is essential for
          the understanding of what seems to scholars and politicians as the “new
          Islamist terrorism” of the 1990s. But there is another element, which is
          perhaps the most important of all. The ideology of Jihad became for many
          adherents of Islamist movements not only an integral part of the religion, but
          the main and sometimes the only part of the religion to follow.

          Many members of Islamist groups lack knowledge any clear understanding of
          orthodox Islam. As their knowledge of true Islamic doctrine is poor, they often
          rely on various Sheikhs and religious scholars, adopting these leaders’
          perceptions of Islam as their own. This gives these leaders and ideologues
          great influence over those sectors of the Muslim public whose knowledge of
          Islam is even poorer. Thus the version of Islam they offer their followers is
          often wholly divorced from religious law, centering instead on the roots of
          social and political confrontation.

          Another element that brought about the perception of global war was the
          vagueness of Islamist goals. Their struggle is not just to liberate a certain
          country from foreign occupation or from a “heretic” regime. These are merely
          steps along the way in an eternal religious mission, whose victory, though
          guaranteed, is to be realized only by future generations. Thus many of the
          Islamists lack a clear political world view and hence, any kind of pragmatism.

          New Terrorism?
          Many researchers and analysts tend to see the violent Islamist phenomenon as a
          kind of “new terrorism.” However, what we should ask ourselves is, do we face a
          new kind of terrorism, or do we simply lack a basic understanding of the
          sources and developments of the “old” terrorism? The conclusion drawn by at
          least some scholars is that a great deal of work remains to be done in order to
          identify the conditions that cause alienation to erupt into violence. What is
          especially important is to trace the links between religion and extreme forms
          of violence.

          So where then is the new terrorism? What is new in the Islamist terrorism of
          the 1990s?

          To begin with the so-called new Islamist terrorism is not the result of the
          decline of state-sponsored terrorism. Unlike the “secular” national, radical,
          anarchist terrorism sponsored by states such as Libya, Syria, Iraq, Cuba, North
          Korea, and behind the scenes by the Soviet camp, most of the Islamist terrorist
          groups have never been sponsored by states. Most of the Egyptian Islamist
          terrorist groups, for example, actually grew independently out of the internal
          Egyptian scene. Other than occasional logistic assistance to some of them on
          the part of Sudan they were not state-sponsored groups. The Algerian terrorist
          groups likewise were not sponsored by foreign states.

          Many of these groups neglected social activity, and were thus ineligible for
          the very generous financial support rendered to other groups by Saudi Arabia
          and the Gulf States. Other groups, notably those of the school of the Muslim
          Brotherhood received extensive financial aid for all kinds of social and
          welfare projects.

          In this sense Hamas is unique, in that it is the only movement of the
          Brotherhood that is intensively involved in both terrorism and social activity.
          Its terrorism, due to the fact that it is directed only against Israel and as
          part of a Palestinian national struggle, gains the support of several Arab
          states or wealthy individuals in Arabia, not to mention its social and welfare
          infrastructure. But no one calls upon the U.S. State Department to include
          those countries in the list of states sponsoring terrorism.

          The model of Hamas has been imitated in recent years by Hizballah in Lebanon,
          which apart from its guerilla activities against Israel, is also involved in
          the social and political strengthening of the Shi`i community in Lebanon, and
          is sponsored by Iran under the patronage of Syria.

          A Geographical Shift
          The new phase of Islamist terrorism is actually the shift on the part of most
          of the Islamist groups from activities in their own countries against the
          secular “heretic” regimes to activities in the global arena. This shift began
          with two developments, which though unconnected on the organizational level,
          yet share a common ideological basis. The first of these was the bombing of the
          World Trade Center in New York in 1993. The second was the participation of
          Islamist volunteers in the conflicts in Bosnia, Albania, Kosovo, Chechnya,
          Kashmir, and Dagestan throughout the 1990s.

          These two developments seem to point to the establishment of what seems to be
          an international or inter-Muslim front in Afghanistan. However this trend was
          also the result of the oppression of these groups by the various Arab regimes,
          which created a camp of Islamist refugees who could no longer operate in their
          homelands. Thus these “Arab Afghans” were forced to take a new direction, that
          of global terrorism. This trend toward international activities was thus not
          necessarily a conscious decision, but may be more the result of external
          factors.

          Sociological Roots of European Islamism
          But there is an older sociological process at work in all this that seems to
          have been reinforced in the last decade, and may be even stronger in the
          future. In the second half of the 20th Century there was a significant increase
          in Muslim immigration to the West, mainly to North America and Western Europe.
          Whereas the first generation of immigrants sought to merge into Western society
          and fought to overcome major economic difficulties, the expectations of the
          second and third generation of immigrants were in many cases unfulfilled. This
          has reinforced their alienation from the Western societies that surrounded
          them.

          Although in many countries, primarily the UK, Scandinavia, and Germany, the
          immigrants were granted generous economic support, and benefited from total
          freedom of organization, spe
          • Gość: ... Re: Is There an Islamist Internationale? cd4 end IP: *.cm-upc.chello.se 26.10.01, 23:00
            Although in many countries, primarily the UK, Scandinavia, and Germany, the
            immigrants were granted generous economic support, and benefited from total
            freedom of organization, speech and education, their own communities were built
            mainly through the generosity of the wealthier Muslim countries.

            The xenophobia of the surrounding societies, coupled with unemployment and the
            difficulty in coping with modernization, led to the growth of an Islamic
            infrastructure, which in the liberal atmosphere of Western democracies could
            serve as a hothouse for Islamist movements. Social associations in London or
            research foundations in the United States, can, for example serve as the
            logistic foundation of Islamist terrorist groups. Such activities as
            recruiting, fund raising, publication and distribution of messages can all be
            done under the cover of social and cultural activities.

            This tends to reinforce the globalization and internationalization of Islamist
            terrorism, and will most likely continue to do so in the future. The growing
            feeling of alienation of Muslim youngsters is perhaps the most important factor
            in analyzing the prospects of future Islamist terrorism.

            Conclusion
            The answer to this phenomenon deserves a separate article. But part of it lies
            in a better understanding on the part of the Western world of the roots of
            Islamist violence. The steps taken by Western countries, under the leadership
            of the United States—steps such as increased cooperation in the field of
            intelligence, new legislation, encouragement of counter-terrorism by Arab and
            Muslim states, extradition of wanted terrorists—are all very important. But
            they provide no solution to the root cause of this phenomenon. This is
            especially true so long as Western countries, as represented by their media,
            politicians, and cultural leaders seem so ready to adopt the Islamist
            perception of the clash of civilizations between Islam and Western culture. In
            so doing they assist the Islamist terrorism to become a strategic global issue.
            By building up the image of an Islam at war with the West, they play into the
            hands of the Islamists.

            An additional element should be borne in mind, and is often neglected by
            scholars dealing with the Islamist phenomenon. This is the existence of
            elements of dissension, personality conflicts and rivalry that have so far
            prevented the growth of Islamist terrorist groups beyond the current level.

            At present the “Islamist Internationale,” such as it is, has several thousand
            hard core members and some ten thousand sympathizers, supporters and fund
            raising activists. However, Osama Bin Ladin is nowhere near to being the new
            Islamic Khalifah and has little prospects of being proclaimed as such. And
            while it is true that there is an increase in international cooperation between
            different groups, and even a consolidation of a new version of Wahhabi-Takfiri
            ideology that helps to unite some of these groups, we cannot say that there is
            an Islamist Internationale ready to unite into a global movement and become a
            global strategic threat.



            --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

            Reuven Paz is the academic director of the International Policy Institute for
            Counter-Terrorism (ICT) in Herzliya, Israel, and is currently a senior visitor
            research fellow in The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Washington
            D.C. His main fields of research are Islamic movements and terrorism and
            Palestinian society.

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