AL QUAIDA'S IDEOLOGY
The ideology that the terrorist group advocates is not quite evident to identify. Indeed, it appears that several ideologies correspond to the principles they support. These are the ideologies were associated with Al Qaida:
Particularist protectionism
The first ideology is the particularist protectionism. Particularist protectionists include groups of people who blame globalization for all the economic, political and cultural issues in their countries or regions. Also, they are against free trade, the power of international investors and the Americanization of the world. They are afraid of the destruction of their culture and fear the loss of their traditional ways of life. Looking at the elements constituting the particularist protectionism, it is difficult not to attribute this similarity to the ideology of Al Qaida.
Jihadism
Secondly, Jihadism is also an ideology that was re-enforced by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. It is important to remember what Jihad stands for before going through the ideology of jihadism. Jihad is an Islamic term to expose the war waged against the non-religious or the infidels towards Islam. We know that Islamic Jihad, which is a Palestinian party, covers several extremist groups that are willing to sacrifice lives in order to accomplish their purpose, being to go back in the past because they consider that time to be purer than today. Modernity is seen as evil and against Allah. Basically, jihadism was an ideology advocated by the Mujahideen that is now advocated by Islamic terrorist groups like Al Qaida. Global jihadism is the response for the modernization of the world by the Western countries because Islamic extremist believe that countries like the United States are responsible for spreading their culture and way of living on the Muslim society. In conclusion, Islamic extremist called for jihad not only to the United States but also to a global scale.
Islamism
Moreover, since we know Al Qaida is a terrorist group composed of anti-western Islamic extremist, we could say that one of their ideology is Islamism. Islamism is based on the ideology that religion should guide every social and political aspect of life as well as personal life. Also, this ideology supports the fact that anything that might harm the religion should be eliminated, especially the influence of economic, political, military and cultural life of the West.
http://middleeast.about.com/od/religionsectarianism/g/me080122a.htm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/islam/beliefs/jihad_1.shtml
Globalization: a very short introduction
http://middleeast.about.com/od/religionsectarianism/g/me080122a.htm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/islam/beliefs/jihad_1.shtml
Globalization: a very short introduction