http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/article/1284/
Brendan O’Neill
"Faisal Devji, author of Landscapes of the Jihad, explains how the London bombers were driven by pity – that most 'dangerous and bitter passion'. Millions, perhaps even billions of words have been written about al-Qaeda since 9/11, all of them struggling to explain this network’s origins, belief systems and methods. Devji cuts through the two most common perceptions about al-Qaeda: that it is political or religious. In fact, he says, it cannot be understood as a political movement in any traditional sense; indeed, it has dispensed with ‘an old-fashioned politics tied to states and citizenship’ (1). It is not traditionally religious, either, he argues, in the sense that it does not follow any recognisable Islamic hierarchy and chops and changes the religious justifications for its actions. "
