ABSTRACT
The contemporary wave of international terrorism has drastically altered those perceptions. This terrorism, motivated by religious extremism, seeks to conduct mass casualty attacks around the world (Hoffman, 1998). It is perpetrated by loosely affiliated Islamist groups from many different countries, which appear able to move with ease across state boundaries. They strike against targets all around the globe in Western and Muslim countries, thereby deserving the description of a global insurgency. The modus operandi of the attacks is usually multiple suicide bombings, and the aim is not to obtain sympathetic media coverage but rather to inflict the maximum amount of destruction. These groups recruit new members either through radical preaching or by spreading their ideology across the Internet. They have developed a global discourse that links the suffering of Muslim peoples around the world, in Chechnya, Palestine and Bosnia, and use it to justify a conflict between religious communities.
