INTRODUCTIONWhile this process takes shape, other tendencies and potentialities may emerge, pres-
enting threats that must be assessed and politically addressed. Jihadists, in Roy’s view,
share a tendency with other religious terrorists (such as the Hindu Tamil Tigers) and also
some Third-Worldist movements to engage in what Mark Juergensmeyer, in his seminal
Terror in the Mind of God, calls ‘‘performance violence,’’ an acting out in which political
calculation is less prominent than the desire to make a statement in the eyes of the world
and to draw perceived enemies into a conflict of ‘‘cosmic’’ proportions. As Roy aptly
notes: ‘‘Osama bin Laden has no strategy in the true sense of the word.... His aim is
simply to destroy Babylon.’’^59
Rather than being merely retrograde or reactive, the jihadists’ expressions of religious
extremism are thus, Roy concludes, ways of mimicking and superlatively outbidding—
and, in that sense, directly getting back at—what are perceived to be hegemonic Western
economic, political, and cultural principles and trends: ‘‘The Western-based terrorists are
not the militant vanguard of the Muslim community; they are a lost generation, un-
moored from traditional societies and cultures, frustrated by a Western society that does
not need their expectations. And their vision of a global ummah is both a mirror of and
a form of revenge against the globalization that has made them what they are.’’^60
It has been suggested that—fueled by repeated and nightmarish Western lapses,
which can be indicated by such proper names as Guanta ́namo Bay, Abu Ghraib, Hadhita,
and now Qana)—jihad is becoming a ‘‘global fad,’’ which, like other counter-cultural
expressions, ‘‘feeds’’ on the lurid images readily provided by the Western media (as well
as al-Jazeerah, the Internet, etc.), shaping a generation whose fascination seems increas-
ingly that of ‘‘making war, not love.’’^61 Jessica Stern argues that ‘‘among many Muslim
youth, especially in Europe, jihad is a cool way of expressing dissatisfaction with a power
elite that is real or imagined; whether power is held by totalitarian monarchs or by liberal
parliamentarians.’’^62 In other words, jihad is in the process of becoming ‘‘a millenarian
movement with mass appeal,’’ whose narratively constructed ‘‘identity of victimhood’’ is
constantly being reinforced by damaging images, that is to say, by ‘‘facts, or at least pic-
tures that appear to be facts.’’^63 Beyond real-life issues in Europe and the Middle East
(i.e., immigration, occupation, and terror), the conflicts in question express—and re-
quire—a battle for an ‘‘idea, not a state’’: ‘‘Military action minimally visible and carefully
planned and implemented may be necessary to win today’s battles. But the tools required
in the long run to win the war are neither bombs nor torture chambers. They are ideas
and stories that counter the terrorist narrative—and draw potential recruits away from
the lure of jihad.’’^64
After the dismantling of its traditional geographical bases in Afghanistan and Pakistan
through U.S.–led military intervention, Al Qaeda has virtually regrouped in the intracta-
ble realm of the Internet. Its members are dispersed in some four thousand different Web
sites, leaving Western intelligence communities with the dilemma of either targeting and,
where possible, destroying them or leaving them intact in order to monitor them and
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