Presents a look at "homegrown" Islamist terrorism, from 9/11 to the present, discusses the perpetrators who have acted both in the U.S. and abroad, and examines the controversial tactics used to track potential terrorists. --Publisher's description.

How big is the threat posed by American ISIS supporters? How many Americans have joined ISIS and how many want to return to the United States? Compared to participation by Americans in other jihadist groups, the scale of American involvement in jihadist activity today is unprecedented. This book, from one of the leading counter-terror centres, draws on first-hand interviews with former American Islamic State members and law enforcement officials who tracked them, and includes detailed analysis of the court cases against them and their social media presence. Homegrown reveals how and why ISIS was able to radicalize and recruit a new generation of jihadist sympathizers in America.

The study is a product of over a year and half of research into the phenomenon of homegrown terrorists--Westerners who have chosen to take up arms against the society in which they were born or raised. Homegrown Terrorists in the U.S. and U.K. examines six different steps are particularly significant as homegrown terrorists radicalize: the adoption of a legalistic interpretation of Islam, coming to trust only a select and ideologically rigid group of religious authorities, viewing the West and Islam and irreconcilably opposed, manifesting a low tolerance for perceived religious deviance, attempting to impose religious beliefs on others, and the expression of radical political views.

In this report, the author examines hundreds of U.S. residents who have traveled or attempted to travel abroad to join or otherwise support terrorist organizations. The focus of the analysis is on the individuals' collective demographic profile.

The story of Mubin Shaikh, a Toronto native who was raised with twenty-first century, Western values, but for whom a chance encounter with the Taliban in Pakistan and then exposure to Canadian extremists resulted in a militant jihadi path--until he turned himself around and started working undercover with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, gathering inside information about the "Toronto 18's" plans for catastrophic terror attacks: to detonate truck bombs around the city of Toronto, behead the Prime Minister, and storm the Parliament Building in retaliation for Western intervention in Muslim lands.

Pathologic leaders are capable of using their power, mind manipulation skills, and unchecked authority to manipulate and annihilate others, their own people, and themselves, as the Nazi Fhrer Adolf Hitler, the messianic reverend James Jones, or Osama bin Laden, the leader of the al-Qaeda social movement, have reminded us. But what about the regular guys? Can a person who, in principle is like you and me, become an agent of terror? In the rise of the media age, it is easy to forget that humankind has been subject to the darkness of terrorism for centuries. In a world scarred by tragedies in locations as divergent as Oklahoma City, Blacksburg, London, Madrid, and New York, finding a way to combat terrorism and acts of terror in our own time is of paramount concern. Yet how do a community, a culture, and a world come to understand how terrorists develop? How do we come to terms with the idea that most terrorists and individuals who commit acts of terror are products of the cultures that we live in, rational actors who operate among us, at times undetected until their actions come to their deadly end? The Dynamics of Terror is a series of essays from a group of expert psychologists, sociologists, and military terror experts. By examining the differences between the individuals who engage in terrorist activities, the authors have composed a unified theory of terrorists. These engaging essays will shed light into the minds of terrorists and provide new ways to identify potential aggressors before tragedy occurs.

This book tells the story of how Al Qaeda grew in the West. In forensic and compelling detail, Jytte Klausen traces how Islamist revolutionaries exiled in Europe and North America in the 1990s helped create and control one of the world's most impactful terrorist movements--and how, after the near-obliteration of the organization during the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, they helped build it again. She shows how the diffusion of Islamist terrorism to Europe and North America has been driven, not by local grievances of Western Muslims, but by the strategic priorities of the international Salafi-jihadist revolutionary movement. That movement has adapted to Western repertoires of protest: agitating for armed insurrection and religious revivalism in the name of a warped version of Islam. The jihadists-Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, and their many affiliates and associates--also proved to be amazingly resilient. Again and again, the movement recovered from major setbacks. Appealing to disaffected Muslims of immigrant origin and alienated converts to Islam, Jihadist groups continue to recruit new adherents in Europe and North America, street-side in neighborhoods, in jails, and online through increasingly clandestine platforms. Taking a comparative and historical approach, deploying cutting-edge analytical tools, and drawing on her unparalleled database of up to 6,500 Western jihadist extremists and their networks, Klausen has produced the most comprehensive account yet of the origins of Western jihadism and its role in the global movement.