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Scott Atran has a wonderful presentation with bullet points, graphs, buzz words, and geneologies to demonstrate how the terrorism virus spreads among international entrepots. Atran's presentations were given to the US State Dept and the UK House of Lords.
Just as all politics is local, terrorism also varies wildly from place to place, fed by the oxygen of the press publicity trying to hype and dramatize violent criminal reactionaries in order to get eyeballs reading papers and watching TV.
The commonalities are few, and religion has less to do with Al Qaeda than the press & pundits make it to be. Basically, AQ is stuck in Waziristan & has no contact with outsiders except those lost souls who pay thousands of Euros to get training in W-stan. The nutjobs come to AQ, which is now just a franchise, with the nucleus just a few hundred mujahideen growing old in caves.
Terrorism is a bunch of networks spread by the internet among young horny misfits in Europe, where the prisons are jammed with Muslims as they are with blacks in the USA. Europe is much more susceptible to the petty criminals joining with comic-book hero-worshipping youth who want to blow something up. Islam is just an afterthought or a bogus reason to express the resentments of an underclass.
The Spanish plot in Madrid which changed the course of a civil society was a total series of unlucky breaks for the 200+ victims of the Asturias petty criminals, Syrian nutjobs, and Moroccan crime ring that pulled it off with only a few months planning.
Atran goes into a lot of detail on the Spanish and Bali catastrophes, both completely different from one another. The Spanish was instigated by Syrians ejected from that country by Assad's crushing the Sunni elites---the Syrians went to their old Umayyad homeland during the Muslim heyday where the Syrians ruled Spain & Andalusia.
The Indonesian terrorists are former Afghan freedom fighters who have intermarried and the Jameeyah Islamiyaah there is mostly a family affair.
Atran's advice on "What NOT to do" is very insightful. The European social welfare systems come under criticism for creating an atmosphere of boredom and alienation that leads to violence to get kicks.
Finally, the entire Muslim system wants "Justice and Fairness" rather than "Freedom and Democracy." I don't know how many times I have been lectured by Saudis and others who say that the superiority of Islam is moral, and that freedom and democracy lead to dissolute behavior and decadence, degeneration, and general outlandish behavior.
No amount of pointing out that fanaticism is the dark side will ever change their minds.
Their extended family systems, at least in the Arabian peninsula, and their sharia law, with all the patriarchal trimmings, suits them just fine.
Meanwhile in Europe and Asia and the Maghreb, the youth are unemployed and restless and will use any excuse to display their resentments.
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