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Leaderless Jihad: Terror Networks in the Twenty-First Century
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Product Description
In the post-September 11 world, Al Qaeda is no longer the central organizing force that aids or authorizes terrorist attacks or recruits terrorists. It is now more a source of inspiration for terrorist acts carried out by independent local groups that have branded themselves with the Al Qaeda name. Building on his previous groundbreaking work on the Al Qaeda network, forensic psychiatrist Marc Sageman has greatly expanded his research to explain how Islamic terrorism emerges and operates in the twenty-first century.
In Leaderless Jihad, Sageman rejects the views that place responsibility for terrorism on society or a flawed, predisposed individual. Instead, he argues, the individual, outside influence, and group dynamics come together in a four-step process through which Muslim youth become radicalized. First, traumatic events either experienced personally or learned about indirectly spark moral outrage. Individuals interpret this outrage through a specific ideology, more felt and understood than based on doctrine. Usually in a chat room or other Internet-based venues, adherents share this moral outrage, which resonates with the personal experiences of others. The outrage is acted on by a group, either online or offline.
Leaderless Jihad offers a ray of hope. Drawing on historical analogies, Sageman argues that the zeal of jihadism is self-terminating; eventually its followers will turn away from violence as a means of expressing their discontent. The book concludes with Sageman's recommendations for the application of his research to counterterrorism law enforcement efforts.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #12761 in Books
- Published on: 2008-01-03
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Hardcover
- 208 pages
Editorial Reviews
Time, March 31, 2008
...Leaderless Jihad discredits conventional wisdom about terrorists by eschewing anecdotes and conjecture in favor of hard data and statistics.
Review
"Politicians who talk about the terrorism threat . . . should be required to read this new book. . . . It stands what you think you know about terrorism on its head and helps you see the topic in a different light."--Washington Post
"It might be comforting to think that angry young Islamists are crazed psychopaths or sex-starved adolescents who have been brainwashed in malign madrassas. But Mr Sageman, a senior fellow at the Philadelphia-based Foreign Policy Research Institute, explodes each of these myths, and others besides, in an unsettling account of how Al Qaeda has evolved from the organisation headed by Osama bin Laden into an amorphous movement--a 'leaderless jihad.'"--The Economist
"Leaderless Jihad discredits conventional wisdom about terrorists by eschewing anecdotes and conjecture in favor of hard data and statistics."--Aryn Baker, Time
"Sageman's incisive observations based on carefully examined evidence, astute insights, and scholarship make Leaderless Jihad the gold standard in Al Qaeda studies."--Washington Times
"[an] important, face-the-facts book . . . Sageman is deservedly one of the best-known academics working on terrorism."--The Spectator
"What distinguishes his new book, Leadless Jihad is that it peels away the emotional, reflexive responses to terrorism that have grown up since Sept. 11, 20001, and looks instead at scientific data Sageman has collected on more than 500 Islamic terrorists --to understand who they are, why they attack, and how to stop them."--David Ignatius, The Washington Post
"Leaderless Jihad provides new analysis and important insights. . . .Sageman's data-driven approach is all too rare in a field dominated by informed (when we're fortunate) opinion."--The American Interest
"Marc Sageman is an extraordinarly thoughtful and creative analyst of the complex patterns of Islamic radicalization taking place within our integrated global culture. His work challenges the way we think about terrorism and and offers important insights about what should be done to prevent or contain such violence."--Steve Coll, author of Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001
"This book belongs at the top of the list for anyone seeking to understand the nature of radical Islamic terrorism, its future, and the effective ways that Western countries can counter its destructive appeal."--Lawrence Wright, author of The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/
Washington Times, February 21, 2008
Sageman's incisive observations based on carefully examined evidence, astute insights, and scholarship make Leaderless Jihad the gold standard in Al Qaeda studies.
Customer Reviews
A different approach to understanding terrorism
This is an excellent book and provides numerous examples about looking at the root causes of terrorism. The author uses a somewhat scientific approach to looking at the root causes of terrorism, for example, he looked at the ages of terrorists, their education and background to debunk current thinking that terrorists have been disenfrancised. Instead he looks at radical islamists/terrorist as having been influenced by radical peers, the Iraqi invasion and the internet chat rooms. There is much to be said about "leaderless jihad" because terrorists evolve not as recruits of a central body but as separate groups that take the jihad on their own.He further defines future efforts and approaches to combat this "leaderless jihad".
Leaderless Jihad
This seems to me an overrated, padded book, with little insight but much fodder for the author's future grant applications. There is some useful culling of statistical reports. The psychological profiles teach less than nothing about the individual jihadis. Sageman's main point, that terrorism is now decentralized and needs to be prevented by adequate psychological massaging of potential recruits, is undercut by his prefatory scene-setting admissions: the jihad has been reduced to low-level cells that lack adequate technical and planning skills precisely because the high end leadership has been run to ground and killed. Of course they could rise and reorganize (if they have not to some extent done so) if we give them territory sufficient to shelter their activities and let down our guard after reading Sageman's book.
Thoughtful analysis of jihad-developments
Marc Sageman knows jihadis first-hand. He trained Taliban for the CIA, and as a forensic psychiatrists he interviewed captured jihadis.
His comparison of the threat of local moslims in the USA and Europe is very interesting. So is his analysis of the person and his context behind the jihadi.
Sageman sees jihadis as a lunatic fringe, which should be reassuring, but is not. He proposes a US pullout from Iraq, and Israeli-Palestinian peace (keep dreaming!) as a way to de-escalate the tension between the jihadis and the US.
