Al-Qaeda—terrorists, hypocrites, fundamentalists? The view from within

Abstract

Al Qaeda, the first multinational terrorist group of the 21st century, embodies the new enigmatic face of terrorism. By organising and perpetrat ing the world's greatest terrorist outrage on 1 1 September 2001, the organisation demonstrated the sophistication of its methods and the magnitude of its threat. In the weeks and months that followed, few other issues-if any-have received more public attention than Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Ladin. Yet, despite the ongoing discussion in the media, academic and policy circles, few contributions have usefully explained the phenomen on. An initial search of the term'Al-Qaeda'on Google generates over 1 2 900 links to articles, interviews, books and commentaries in multiple languages. However, speculation about the strength and extent of Al-Qaeda, bewilder ing descriptions of a shadowy network, undercover terrorist cells, new arrests.

Keywords Multinational terrorist, Al-Qaed , Osama bin Ladin