Al Qaeda in the West as a Youth Movement: the power of a narrative

Abstract:

This paper by a noted expert on Islam, Olivier Roy, declares that the success of Osama Bin Laden is not to have established a modern and efficient Islamist political organisation, but to have invented a narrative that could allow rebels without a cause to connect with a cause. Instead of looking vertically through Muslim history and theology to explain Al Qaeda’s violence, he argues that it should be connected to the general phenomenon of radical violence among youth

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