All causus belli are often overlooked in favor of a reductionist approach that views these organizations simply as “jihadi murderers,” crazy Arabs; or Islam itself is presented as “the enemy.” As a result, these analysts tend to become propagandists for the War on Terror, trafficking in orientalist pseudo-explanations, and effec- tively ignoring the key questions: how and why did al-Qaeda and transnational jihad rise and why did they turn their guns against the United States? In US policy circles, as well as those in the West (though to a lesser extent), there existed little appreciation of the fact that neither Islam nor its religious texts would be useful in unlocking the “al- Qaeda riddle.” Bin Laden and Zawahiri thought in strategic and political terms, veiling their real ambitions in cultural and religious cloth. In his two most recent works, 2008, respectively, Zawahiri acknowledges that al-Qaeda’s strategy is designed to win Muslims’ hearts and minds and become the leader and vanguard of the umma. To do so, he points out that the Islamist movement must raise the banner of liberation over the three most important holy sites, all of which are occupied by foreigners— Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia and al-Aqsa in Jerusalem: the Muslim masses would not rise up unless there is leadership that they can trust and a well-defined enemy. In particular, Zawahiri stressed that Palestine is the one issue on which the umma agrees and the Islamist movement must champion and take ownership of it. Time and again, bin Laden and Zawahiri stressed that the expulsion of American and Israeli occupiers from Islam’s holy sites remains their top priority. From the beginning of his trans- national journey in the mid-1990s, bin Laden’s pronouncements were littered with references to America and Israel or what he called the “Judeo-Christian alliance which is occupying Islamic sacred land in Palestine and of Saudi Arabia.” When he formally launched al-Qaeda in February 1998, bin Laden prioritized his call to Mus- lims: “To kill the Americans and their allies—civilians and mili- tary—is an individual duty incumbent upon every Muslim in all countries, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque [ Jerusalem] and the Holy Mosque [Mecca] from their grip.”
Bin Laden’s detractors and supporters mistook his rhetoric for strategy and painted his terrorist tactics in terms of expressive cul- tural acts. But al-Qaeda is a vehicle for his nationalist empowerment inside the Saudi kingdom, along similar lines to Zawahiri’s Tanzim al-Jihad in Egypt. The empowerment of the umma and the restora- tion of the Islamic caliphate is an ideal, impossible to attain, but a powerful tool of ideological and theological mobilization that reso- nated with thousands of young Saudis and Yemenis. In multiple testimonies, some of these recruits have said that they joined bin Laden because they were motivated by a desire to expel American occupiers from Muslim lands, particularly Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden targeted an important constituency, one that responded reflexively to specific religious and cultural symbols and references, and was willing to act upon them. A qualification is in order here: one must guard against a reverse tendency to diminish the significance of September 11 or underes- timate its consequences. There are few examples of non-Western insurgent groups striking the metropole in the way that al-Qaeda did, and this “global” element remains hugely significant, whatever exaggerated claims are made of the reach of transnational jihad. Throughout the Cold War, insurgents kept their struggles local, even though they fought as proxies of foreign powers. The same was true with most anti-colonial conflicts. Algeria represents an exception to the rule, but there, much of the mainland terrorism was perpetrated by homegrown right-wingers. A crucial and enabling factor of the attacks on New York and Washington was, therefore, globalization