NOTES TO PAGES 19–20Cerf, 2004);Mysticism and Politics: A Critical Reading of Fi Zilal al-Qu’ran by Sayyid Qutb (1906–
1966), ed. Reinhard Schulze (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2003). For a view taken from everyday life, see Anne
Nivat,Islamistes: Comment ils nous voient(Paris: Fayard, 2006).
- Roy, ‘‘The Ideology of Terror.’’
- Jessica Stern, ‘‘Terrorism: Jihad Is a Global Fad,’’ inThe International Herald Tribune,
August 2, 2006. - Ibid.
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- See Gabriel Weimann, ‘‘Deadly Conversations: Terrorists on the Web,’’ inThe Interna-
tional Herald Tribune, July 21, 2006. - SeeLe Monde, August 6, 2005. That the very concept of electronic monitoring—as in the
cooperation between the American National Security Agency (NSA) and phone companies such as
AT&T, Verizon, and BellSouth—is problematic, not just for legal and moral but for logistical or
mathematical reasons, is convincingly argued by Jonathan David Farley in ‘‘Getting the Terrorists
on the Phone: The NSA’s Math Problem,’’ inThe International Herald Tribune, May 17, 2006. See
also the informative article ‘‘National Security Agency: Les Oreilles de l’Ame ́rique,’’ inLe Monde,
June 1, 2006. Farley argues that ‘‘graph theorists’’ and ‘‘social network analysis specialists’’ have the
greatest difficulty determining the exact factual patterns of communication, with its ‘‘central play-
ers’’ and hierarchies, based on a ‘‘chart with dots or ‘nodes’ representing individuals and lines
between nodes if one person has called another.’’ An unimportant person in the chain of command
may take the most calls; a crucial person in the chain of events may show up only once.
The problem is hardly solved by the fact that, in addition to government agencies such as the
NSA and CIA, private security companies, such as theSearch for International Terrorist Entities
(SITE), are either contracted for or volunteer information that they track on jihadist Web sites. See
Benjamin Wallace-Wells, ‘‘Private Jihad: How Rita Katz Got into the Spying Business,’’The New
Yorker, May 29, 2006. For the role of private Internet companies such as Yahoo and its Chinese
partner Alibaba.com, Microsoft, Cisco Systems, and Google with regard to sites deemed ‘‘obscene’’
or ‘‘politically subversive’’ by Chinese authorities, seeThe International Herald Tribune, July 20,
2006, and also the special report ‘‘China and the Internet: The Party, the People and the Power of
Cyber-Talk,’’ inThe Economist, April 29, 2006, which cites Bill Clinton’s insightful comment that
China’s attempts to curtail Internet access and guide its use are ‘‘sort of like trying to nail Jell-O to
the wall.’’ China has the second largest group of Internet users after the U.S. and hence constitutes
an enormous, growing market, even though it has its own—censored—search engines (such as
baidu.com, which exploits approximately 56 percent of the available market).
The organization Reporters sans frontiers (Reporters Without Borders) has taken Google to
task for indirectly being responsible for the arrest of Internet journalists. Indeed, of the fifty-eight
online journalists who, according to some sources, are currently jailed, fifty are in China. The
collaboration of Western Internet providers with the Chinese authorities is nothing exceptional.
Telecom Italia owns a large portion of the Cuban Internet, and the French company Wanadoo offers
broadband services in Tunesia (see Elda Dorren, ‘‘Online vrijheid in gevaar,’’ inNRC Handels-
blad, June 12, 2006). According to Reporters sans frontie`res (www.rfs.org), in 2005 there were some
fifteen countries that censored the Web. The organization has urged Western countries to develop
legislation for multinational Internet companies that offer services in countries with human rights
violations. - One might argue that something similar is happening in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in
Lebanon. See Steven Erlanger, ‘‘How ‘Winning’ Might Be Defined by Israel and Hezbollah,’’ inThe
International Herald Tribune, August 3, 2006. Erlanger sketches a ‘‘battle of perceptions’’ based
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