Global Jihad: temi, piste di diffusione e il fenomeno del reducismo ...

Muslims to cope with the technological, cultural, or economic aspects of Western
modernization. Many of them blame this failure on the secular cultures and
ideologies that have influenced various modern Middle Eastern regimes; thus they
look for salvation in a return to the glorious past of Islam. Since orthodox Islam is
identified with Islamic establishments whose source of power is these regimes, many
Muslims now support those who represent the opposite culture: the radical activists
who opposes the national state and its interpretation of Islam.
3. The globalization of the Islamist struggle
The prospects for cooperation between various Islamist groups have improved
during the past decade—and particularly over the past two years—for several
reasons. Chief among them was the fall of the Soviet Union. Islamists perceived this
collapse as a victory over “The Kingdom of Evil” and as an historic step toward the
global triumph of Islam and the Muslims. Twelve years earlier, the success of the
Islamic revolution in Iran had been viewed in a similar fashion—it gave even the
Sunni Islamic groups a revolutionary Islamic model, although they had many
reservations about its content. The Soviet collapse, however, heralded a new stage in
the global war between Islam and Western culture.
This fall served also as a reminder that the global conspiracy against Islam—the one
political and cultural perception that all Islamist groups held in common—still
existed. The United States had become the sole leading force in this conspiracy,
though and a more dangerous one than the Soviet Union. To Islamists, the United
States represents the leading edge of the Western threat to the Islamic world, not so
much through its military force or political colonialism, but rather through its
cultural influence.
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