The above article is an excellent description of the dynamics and evolution of Islamist extremist terrorism. It echoes TRC analyses that employed similar epidemiological, viral, and metastasizing cancer terms and descriptions on the phenomenon over the past year. Particularly trenchant approaches to understanding Islamist extremist militancy as a viral ?social contagion? include identifying the ?vectors? of transmission of the ideology and the virulently ?infectious? purchase of the ideology within societies and communities, which, as a result of a cocktail of environmental conditions?political, economic, social, religious?and personal and social psychologies, have made that community fertile ground for such an ideology to take root.

As noted in WAR Report analyses, the al-Qaeda variant of Islamist extremist ideology carries a profoundly virulent purchase that is transmitted by global communications and in venues of radicalization?prisons, mosques, cyber communities and resources, etc.?where it can take hold in and rally susceptible individuals. The ideology offers an absolving explanation for their pernicious conditions through the ontological lens of the Islamist extremist narrative; it also provides an empowering course to ameliorate grievances via Islamist extremist militancy.

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