Word: sageman
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Radical Muslims become bombers, Sageman argues, when the causes of their anger--the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, the U.S. invasion of Iraq--come to be perceived as part of a wholesale war against Islam. This feeling of being under attack may be amplified by personal experience of discrimination and then validated by exchanges with like-minded friends, family members and Internet users before being converted into action by "al-Qaeda." Not, as Sageman puts it, "al-Qaeda Central" (made up of those who have sworn an oath of loyalty to Osama bin Laden) but al-Qaeda the informal network...
...Qaeda Central, says Sageman, is on the wane, its leaders dead or on the run and increasingly isolated. It is the informal al-Qaeda--born after the attacks on Sept. 11 and exploding into raging adolescence after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003--that is the real threat, waging the "leaderless jihad" of the book's title chapter...
Poverty and lack of opportunity are not necessarily the factors that drive young men to commit violence in al-Qaeda's name. (Sheikh was middle class and educated at a private school.) "They view themselves as warriors willing to sacrifice themselves for the sake of building a better world," Sageman explains, "and this gives meaning to their lives." They are also younger and less visible, blending in with the Western societies they grew...
...jihadi Internet forums for guidance and bomb-making expertise. The Madrid train bombings of 2004, which killed 191 commuters, are an example of an atrocity committed by such young men. The attacks were an "offering to al-Qaeda Central leaders for ... admission into the ranks of global Islamist terrorism," Sageman writes...
...Middle East," he writes. He also recommends an end to the offering of rewards, to the publication of most-wanted lists and to the staging of press conferences that proclaim the capture of top terrorists, since jihadis regard all these as badges of honor. It would be better, Sageman says, to treat terrorists like common criminals...