Motivation of Al_Qaeda

At the core of Weber's analysis of what he refers to as religious "rejections" of the world is the concept of rationality or rationalism, the name he gives to an attitude whereby a society moves away from impulses, superstition, and emotion and toward social organization. This does not mean that rationalism itself is perfect. First of all, many different "rational conclusions" (Weber, 1946, p. 324) have been drawn by many different societies in the world. Secondly, too much rationalism may foster a "bureaucratic" social structure, which is marked by impersonalism, the enemy of personal freedom and individual personality. Capitalism is a high but potentially pernicious (i.e., bureaucratic, impersonal, power-laden) expression of rational social structure because capitalism as an organizing principle has something of a lif

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ey are to be reconciled (Lewis, 1994, p. 9). Writing in 1998, Maley points out that the Taliban would have been politically ineffectual without support from sources outside Afghanistan--now the US, now Pakistan, now Saudi Arabia. Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda, both of which are products of Saudi Arabia, are not Maley's focus, but the events of September 11 and afterward suggest that non-Afghan support of the Taliban may have entailed a shift in the locus of political control away from indigenous Afghans. Pursuing what may be interpreted as an agenda friendly to though independent of Taliban priorities, Osama bin Laden periodically articulated the need for a Muslim jihad (holy war) against the US and specifically called for attacks against US targets and persons. US officials have attributed coordinated US embassy bombings in Africa, the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen, and the September 11 attack on the WTC to Al-Qaeda and mastermind Osama bin Laden (Woodward, 2001). The specific issues around which Al-Qaeda seems to have organized itself are not irrelevant to this research, but they are something of a moving target. Osama bin Laden's stated reasons for targeting the US have been the US military presence in Saudi Arabia, which h
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Approximate Pages = 12 (250 words per page)

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