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Leaderless Jihad: Terror Networks in the Twenty-first Century

Dangers of the group mentality

Marc Sageman
University of Pennsylvania Press, 200pp, £16.50,

Alan Judd

Wednesday, 23rd January 2008

Alan Judd on Marc Sageman's latest book

So why are they doing it? Partly for the intoxicating pleasures already mentioned, and partly, according to Sageman, because they can. The internet makes possible a leaderless jihad of anti-western political violence. You can be part of it without having to go anywhere and join it; it tells you how to make bombs and all you want to know about why you’re doing it. It offers a virtual immortality to those seeking a heroic image of themselves. It franchises violence, giving a cause to those that seek one. Iraq was a gift, making it possible to portray the War on Terror as the War on Islam.

As for what’s to be done, Sageman argues that we should forget ideological and religious arguments, stop glamorising terrorists by talking of war, treat them as the common criminals they think they aren’t, encourage more media coverage of the many Muslims who condemn terrorism, recruit more police from ethnic communities, act positively against discrimination and exclusion, make young men work rather than draw the dole, ensure due process and impartial justice, oppose all atrocities including those committed by allies — and get out of Iraq. And we should do it before the al-Qa’eda franchise mutates into the all-purpose protest vehicle for that bitter minority of every generation who seeks utopia in the murder of their contemporaries.

There’s much else in this important, face-the-facts book, including a persuasive account of why America seems not to have the home-grown terrorist problem that Europe has (different immigration and employment policies, less social security). Sageman’s proposals amount to a pretty good recipe — if only we had all the ingredients to hand.