Jihadi Kitsch: The <i>Promesse de Bonheur</i> of Islamist Terrorism

Laden and Islamist Terrorism

The “New Economy of Terror:” The Financing of Islamist Terrorism

This paper exposes the “roadmap” of how modern Islamist terrorism is financed, through both legitimate and illegitimate means: the networks and linkages between financing obtained on the one hand through sympathetic Islamic governments, Islamic charities and banks, seemingly legitimate businesses operating as fronts, and on the other hand through criminal activities running the full gamut from ...

Misreading Islamist Terrorism: the ‘‘war against Terrorism’’ and Just-war Theory

The Bush administration’s military war on terrorism is a blunt, ineffective, and unjust response to the threat posed to innocent civilians by terrorism. Decentralized terrorist networks can only be effectively fought by international cooperation among police and intelligence agencies representing diverse nation-states, including ones with predominantly Islamic populations. The Bush administrati...

Understanding Jihadi Networks

The terrorist threat to the United States of America comes from a violent Islamist revivalist social movement, united by a utopian vision of justice and fairness. Our efforts to deal with this threat are hampered by the wide variety of commonly held beliefs about terrorism. Conventional wisdom offers up several explanations: terrorists are a product of poverty and broken families; ignorance; th...

Content Analysis of Jihadi Extremist Groups' Videos

This paper presents an exploratory study of jihadi extremist groups’ videos using content analysis and a multimedia coding tool to explore the types of videos, groups’ modus operandi, and production features. The videos convey messages powerful enough to mobilize members, sympathizers, and even new recruits to launch attacks that will once again be captured and disseminated via the Internet. Th...