Abstract
This chapter traces the pre-9/11 historical background of Islamic violent extremism and the rise of al Qaeda. Prior to 9/11, the threat of al Qaeda was largely disregarded in the U.S. and considered insignificant, even though attacks occurred against a U.S. embassy and a U.S. naval ship. This chapter highlights the contrast in U.S. perceptions of violent extremism then and now, clarifying the extent and extremity of Islamophobia in the present climate. This chapter’s close examination of the run-up to the 9/11 attacks and the launch of the War on Terror provides essential background on the U.S.’s invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, its shift in national security strategy toward countering violent extremism, and the surge in Islamophobia that followed 9/11. When 9/11-associated violent extremism became the focus of national security, Muslims across the globe, especially in the U.S., began to experience a heightened form of discrimination from racial profiling and invasive searches by state agencies. By describing various events and policies in the U.S. of the 1990s up to the attacks of September 11, 2001, this chapter sets the stage for better understanding the context of the 9/11 attacks, the unfolding of the War on Terror, and the Islamophobic climate it has fostered.
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Notes
- 1.
Many of these groups, who opposed the United States and/or its allies, received external support and assistance from the old communist régime in Moscow. With the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, support ceased. Never able to develop separate support bases on their own many of the groups followed the demise of their Soviet financiers. For more information see Max Boot, “The Evolution of Irregular Warfare,” Foreign Policy, March/April 2011, 100–114.
- 2.
See Noam Chomsky, International Terrorism: Image and Reality,” in Western State Terrorism edited by Alexander George (New York: Routledge, 1991) for a fuller account of the Reagan Doctrine and its use in support of proxies nations to fight real and imagined Soviet sponsored terrorist groups in the Middle East, North Asia and Latin America.
- 3.
These included 20 American soldiers living in the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, 17 seamen aboard the USS Cole in Yemen harbor and 12 U.S. Embassy personnel working in Nairobi and Dar es Salam.
- 4.
The other areas that President Clinton had termed the “dark side of globalization” includes; international drug trafficking, international organized crime and the spread of weapons of mass destruction.
- 5.
U.S. Congress. Joint Inquiry into the Intelligence Community Activities before and after the Terrorist Attacks of 11 September 2001, Report to the U.S. Select Committee on Intelligence and the U.S House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, S. Report No. 107-351, H. Report No. 107-792, 107th Cong., 2nd sess., December 2002, 48 (hereafter referred to as Joint Inquiry Report).
- 6.
One report suggests that Bin Laden Unit had waited too long to get work to the CIA agents in Bangkok and by the time they received the information it was too late.
- 7.
Though he was later absolved and given a hero’s burial in New York seven months later, the incident points to the injustice that can arise from Islamophobia against Americans. Wynne Davis, Liyna Anwar, “A Mother Remembers Her Son, A Muslim American First Responder Who Died on Sept. 11,” National Public Radio, September 8, 2017, https://www.npr.org/2017/09/08/549251929/a-mother-remembers-her-son-a-muslim-american-first-responder-who-died-on-sept-11.
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Farhadi, A. (2020). The Invisible Rise of AL Qaeda. In: Countering Violent Extremism by Winning Hearts and Minds. Advanced Sciences and Technologies for Security Applications. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50057-3_2
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