Word: sageman
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...Radical Muslims become bombers, Sageman argues, when the causes of their anger - the Israeli occupation of Palestine, the U.S. invasion of Iraq - come to be perceived as part of a general war against Islam. The 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, mobilizing...
...Qaeda Central, says Sageman, is on the wane, its leaders on the run or dead and increasingly isolated. It is the informal al-Qaeda - born after the attacks on September 11, 2001, 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 its name. Middle-class and educated at a private school, Sheikh exemplifies another kind of motivation. "They view themselves as warriors willing...
...States attempts to carry out in the Middle East." He also recommends an end to the offering of rewards, publication of "most wanted" lists and staging of press conferences to 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...
...None of Sageman's solutions are new, nor are they achievable soon. The problems of Palestine and Iraq are of mind-numbing complexity, and as for depriving al-Qaeda of publicity, many would argue that successful prosecution of the war on terror actually makes visible battles and results necessary. But it isn't a forensic psychiatrist's job to come up with counterterrorist strategy. It is their job to offer a cogent alternative to the "Why do they hate us?" hand-wringing that dominates much writing about the terrorist mind-set, and Sageman has done that with great clarity...
...Leaderless Jihad, the latest book by the author of 2004's Understanding Terror Networks, forensic psychiatrist Marc Sageman attempts to unravel the psychological profile of Islamist terrorists. Like his earlier book, Leaderless Jihad discredits conventional wisdom about terrorists by eschewing anecdotes and conjecture in favor of hard data and statistics. And statistically, the enemy...