These different sources of propaganda and/or violence vary in their intellectual underpinnings, sectarian and political aims, and in their internationalist or nationalist orientations. But what they have in common is an assault on the values of the West – on its democratic processes and its freedom of religion – and an exultation over the murder of Jews, Americans, Hindus, ‘unbelievers’, ‘infidels’, ‘apostates’ and various ‘infe- rior’ others. Notwithstanding the common perception in the West, the origin of Islamist terrorism is not victimhood, nor an inferiority complex, but a well-financed superiority com- plex grounded in a violent political ideology. The cultural problem of.
