Introduction

Abstract

For some analysts, September 11 demonstrated that after the defeat of the Nazis in World War II and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the West is now confronted with another ominous threat: Islamic terrorism. Radical Islamists, or jihadists, best represented by Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, regard terrorism—the organized, deliberate, and indiscriminate killing of civilians, including women and children, for a political purpose—as morally justifiable. For jihadists there are no innocents: they regard the bankers, bond traders, office workers, fire fighters, and other Americans who perished in the Twin Towers and Pentagon as backers and agents of a government that oppresses Muslims. Therefore their death was deserved. Jihadists regard terrorist attacks, which kill, destroy, and create an aura of fear in their wake, as legitimate means of fulfilling their sacred mission: regaining dignity for Muslims, carriers of Allah’s message, by ending the humiliation and oppression imposed on them by Western infidels; overturning existing corrupt and “apostate” Muslim governments and replacing them with regimes committed to Islamic teachings; restoring the caliphate and Muslim religious and political hegemony over all lands where Islam once prevailed and ultimately over the entire planet; and imposing, by force if necessary, a stringent interpretation of Islamic law throughout the Muslim world.