The cases are a reminder that terrorist threats, including ones that could involve significant harm inside the United States, are not primarily the work of any one group, be it al-Qaeda or any other. That reminder is contrary to much current discourse about terrorism, which posits al-Qaeda as the enemy. The specter that seems to haunt most discussion of terrorism within the United States is the al-Qaeda sleeper cell, even though neither the raft of cases over the past few months nor anything else has uncovered such a cell. The American jihadists have either had no connection with any foreign group or have turned to other organizations such as the Somali Al Shabab or the Pakistani Lashkar-e-Taiba.
The centrality of al-Qaeda in the common discourse has led to a division between terrorist plots and incidents we worry about and ones we don’t, according to whether there are any “links” to al-Qaeda. This is somewhat analogous to hate-crimes legislation, which places higher importance, and imposes heavier punishment, on some criminal acts than on other acts with identical physical harm, according to the motivation or ideology of the perpetrator. The rationale for specially identifying hate crimes is that some hateful ideas can cause damage to the social fabric, going beyond the immediate physical harm.
http://newageislam.com/the-al-qaeda-fallacy--no-particular-epicentre-of-jihad/war-on-terror/d/2225
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11:02 PM
Moderate Islamist here
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