Al-Qaeda

The outrages carried out in recent years in diverse places of the world bearsomething that can only be called the “mark of al-Qaeda.” The planes thatcrashed into the Twin Towers, the bombs that exploded in Madrid, or theattack against American naval ships in Yemen were attributed to an internationalnetwork led by Osama bin Laden, located somewhere inAfghanistan. Although the existence of this “network” is not clear and itsstructure remains part of the unknown, it differs from the political partiesand movements known until now in two particular ways: It has demonstratedits willingness to attack anywhere in the world, and there do notseem to be too many requirements for joining it.In order to determine if this “network of networks” called al-Qaedaexists, we must first understand the rise and subsequent fall of the earlierIslamic movements that evolved out of the fervor of Iran’s Islamic revolutionof 1979. Second, we must realize the significance of adhering to amovement that has no partisan structure or links based on a strict ideologicalaffinity, given that many political parties exclude all who do not agreewith their own definite ideological set of rules.1The Radicalization of IslamFor the first time in the twentieth century, the revolution led by ImamKhomeini enabled a mass political movement rising aloft the political bannerof Islam to assume political and state power by means of revolution. In ...