The era of network terrorism. The evolution of the organisational structure of the global Salafi Jihad movement at the beginning of the twenty-first century

Abstrakt

This article is an attempt to draw attention to the issue of the network nature of terrorist structures in the early twenty-first century. It analyses the essence of the so-called network terrorism from an Islamic perspective. The example of the global Salafi jihad movement (GSJM) is recognised as key. It is a social movement established at the turn of the century, referring to the Salafi ideology and promoting the so-called holy war with its enemies in theWest. One of the principal manifestations of its activity is terrorism. The evolution of the movement has occurred on several levels, one of the more important of these being organisational. The proliferation of the terrorist threat posed by the GSJM is closely associated with the construction of the network structure of the organisation. Analysis of the available sources indicates that the current organisation of the GSJM has the form of the so-called second-level structured network.