Beyond Belief: Islamist Strategic Thinking and International Relations Theory

Abstract

Since the bombing attacks launched on the transport systems in Madrid in 2003 and London in 2005, and the discovery of similar plots between 2005 and 2013 in Toronto, New York, Sydney, Melbourne, London, Copenhagen, Frankfurt, and Boston, Western governments increasingly recognize that home-grown Islamist radicalization represents a profound threat to open, liberal, secular Western societies. Peter Neumann, for example, argues that Europe has developed into the “nerve centre of global jihad,”1 whilst others have noted that every major attack launched under the auspices of Al-Qaeda, even before 9/11, has had some link to Europe.2 David Kilcullen contends that Europe is both a site of conflict that jihadists exploit, and the source of intellectual capital that increasingly performs a “cadre function” for promoting both global and local jihadism.3