A new RAND report by Brian Jenkins provides a much-needed overview of jihadi radicalization cases and terrorism plots in the United States since 2001. The study pairs up very nicely with Petter Nesser’s equally indispensable overview of plots in Europe. Apart from offering a comprehensive list of cases, Jenkins makes a number of very pertinent observations, not least regarding the scale of the problem. How many of you knew that 1970s America saw 15 to 20 times as many terrorist incidents as the post 9/11 period?
4 Responses
I was disappointed by your book. It seems like a hastily assempled Lexis-Nexis search. Was there more to it that the publisher took out? The strengths of the paper you coauthored with Stephane Lacroix about Juhayman were not on display in this book. Did you write in-depth background and the publisher excised it to ‘dumb’ it down for the general public? Is that what happened? I had waited for this book for a long time. I could not believe that this meager book was all you had to say about the subject. Another distressing angle is that you thank Prince Turki al-Faisal, the former head of Saudi intelligence and you imply that the Saudis paid for your research visits. I hope I read that wrong. You should clarify those sentences you wrote in the acknowledgements. I would not associate Saudi funding with academic objectivity.
Gimby, what book are you referring to of Hegghammers? If what you say is true about Saudi funding, I too would be quite disappointed.
I should also like to know if Hegghammer has been financed by prince Turki al-Faisal. This question is too important to ignore.
Of course I wasn’t.
I thanked the King Faisal Centre for Research and Islamic Studies because they hosted me as a visiting researcher, which specifically means that 1) they supported my visa application and 2) they gave me a desk. Nothing more. There is nothing unusual or fishy about this; practically everyone who has done fieldwork in the Kingdom in the past eight years has been hosted by the King Faisal Centre.
I didn’t respond to this preposterous accusation earlier because I never respond to criticism by people who write anonymously.