The Death of Global Jihad: The Origin and Reality of Islamic Terrorism.

摘要

Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Islamic terrorism has been propagated as a seemingly unavoidable threat to our daily lives. However, the globally oriented anti-Western jihad movement peaked in the late 1990s and early 2000s and has since been in decline. Across much of Africa and the Middle East, fringe groups have used Islam as a rallying cry to attract supporters who might otherwise dismiss their rather extreme tactics. Many of these groups claim to adhere to al Qaeda's brand of global terror, but they do so largely to obtain financing and support for their individual nationalist agendas. The vast majority of Muslims worldwide are increasingly rejecting violent terrorist tactics in favor of peace, or in the case of many of the Arab Spring revolutions, sometimes violence is simply the means for the end goal of democracy and secularization.;This thesis aims to address the origins of Islamic terrorism by looking at several major incursions into the Islamic world and how those incursions fostered an ever-present, though largely dormant undercurrent of extremism among Muslims. The history of these incursions as they relate to extremism is followed by an assessment of the threat posed by terrorist networks to the West using open sources such as jihadist press releases and declassified government documents.