Fawaz A. Gerges argues that Al-Qaeda has degenerated into a fractured, marginal body kept alive largely by self-serving anti-terrorist bureaucracy it helped to spawn. In The Rise and Fall of Al-Qaeda, Fawaz Gerges, known for his expertise on radical ideologies, including jihadism, argues that Western powers have become mired in a "terrorism narrative," stemming from mistaken belief that America is in danger of a devastating attack by a crippled Al-Qaeda. To explain why Al-Qaeda is no longer a threat, he provides a written history of the organization, showing its emergence from disintegrating local jihadist movements of mid-1990s, not just Afghan resistance of 1980s. During this period, Gerges interviewed many jihadis, gaining a first-hand view of the movement that Bin Laden tried to reshape. He reveals that transnational jihad has attracted a small minority within Arab world and possesses no viable social and popular base. He shows the attacks of September 11, 2001, were a major miscalculation, no "river" of fighters flooded from Arab countries to defend Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, as Bin Laden expected. Democratic revolutions that swept Middle East in early 2011 show that Al-Qaeda today is a non-entity which exercises no influence over Arabs' political life. Gerges shows a link between new phenomenon of homegrown extremism in Western societies and the war on terror, particularly in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and that homegrown terror exposes the structural weakness, not strength, of Bin Laden's Al-Qaeda which has splintered into feuding factions.
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