The first generation of modern Islamism was formulated in resistance to the colonial presence. This "Islamic" resistance expressed itself, first on intellectual grounds, in the reaction of "reformists" such as Afghani, Rida and Abduh, and then, after 1928, in the political field by Hassan al-Banna and the Muslim Brotherhood.

(This is the second of a three-part series)

Even though this generation succeeded in espousing Islamic references in the nationalist discourse, it failed in Egypt, Tunisia and Algeria, to reap the political benefits of accessing power.

The second generation responded to the realities of the post-colonial period, and was born from the cultural policy of Islamists toward the nationalist elites who came to power after independence. The Islamic lexicon was first used to denounce what the Islamists perceived as the "cultural legacy" of the colonial era, and then the growing authoritarianism of the nationalist elites.

This Islamist generation accused the post-colonial elites of failing to assume a cultural and symbolic rupture from the colonial universe. In other words, they reproached them for their inability to perfect the "disassociation" from the dominant foreign power by restoring the primacy of the endogenous "Islamic" symbolic system.

Islamist rhetoric has somehow extended to the cultural field to encompass the "old" nationalist process of "disassociation" from the colonizer leading up to political independence, and then the policy of "nationalization" (oil, land of the Suez Canal, and so on) in the economic field, using Western Marxist thought.

The second grievance, which emerged at a slow pace, was directed at autocracy, which often enjoyed the tolerance and complicit political support of the former colonial powers, whose incursions into the internal dynamics of the state became increasingly obvious.

Additionally, the Arab nationalists, who led a struggle for independence, were accused of not only extending the terms of cultural domination, but, increasingly, of endorsing a new economic, political and military "dependency" vis-à-vis the former colonial powers and, later, the American superpower to whom they passed the baton.

During the 1990s, the third generation of Islamists, in the form of al-Qaida, stood out from the rest of the vast Islamist nebula.

This "rising power" appeared to result from a confluence of three factors: the thrust of First-World interventionism and unilateralism following the collapse of the USSR; the exacerbated problem of undemocratic Arab despotism (the "near enemy" according to Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaida's second in command), coupled with its promoters and foreign profiteers (the "far enemy"), namely the United States; and the capitalization by jihadists of, on the one hand, their participation in the resistance to Soviet occupation in Afghanistan and, on the other, the perceived impotence and ineffectiveness of their legalistic competitors, such as the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Roots of Radicalization, and its Future

The changing global political landscape also created a new ideological and operational environment for this new generation of Islamists. In the early 1990s, shortly after the second Gulf War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the dynamic of post-colonial domination increasingly and explicitly yielded the creation of a new "imperial" order, dominated this time by the United States. American interventionism, with the absence of the geopolitical divisions of a bipolar, Cold-War world, knew few bounds.

The United States began to play an active role in the construction of an economic, political, and cultural world order. The ideological foundation of this new standard, America's manifest destiny, has resulted in a project that has tried to unilaterally impose American religious and secular norms on the rest of the world.

The tendency toward unilateralism has only served to de-legitimize and discredit this program and, along with it, America's role as a leading world power.

The reckless use of military power occurred in the same proportion as the ideological vacuum nature of the statements of this new international order. Hard power, used for the 'war to liberate Kuwait,' led to establishing a direct U.S. military presence in several countries in the Arabian Peninsula.

This quasi-occupation was an essential grievance in the warrior mentality of Osama Bin Laden and his followers. Moreover, the negative repercussions or consequences of Iraq's suffering under an embargo and the accelerated deterioration of the Palestinian situation in the post-Oslo Agreement era revealed the obvious limitations of U.S. foreign policy in the region, and heavily contributed to the loss of credibility of the "New World Order."

The latter, promoted by the United States, was highlighted by the lack of U.S. involvement and commitment in peace negotiations.

Further, the new world order promoted by the United States is simply an avenue to continue its military superiority, economic interests and continued support of its allies (namely Israel).

The first of the two major political errors of the promoters of this new world order undoubtedly consisted of minimizing the extent of discredit (delegitimization) of the authoritarian regimes on which they relied.

In the wake of the Iranian crisis and misunderstandings that existed since 1979, the second error was to criminalize, indiscriminately, the entire generation of Islamists, the main reservoir of opposition to these regimes, simply because Islamism was proclaimed as its main reference points and no effort was made to discover the reality of its political agenda.

In the imagination of an entire generation of Muslims, and, obviously, in the powerful Islamist current as a whole, exogenous factors of internal political crises (the "far enemy" of Zawahiri) will thus be systematically associated with this increased visibility of American leadership in the international order, the regional order (Arab-Israeli), and in the internal Arab context in particular.

In the Islamist arena, internationalization and de-territorialization of the armed struggle began at the same time: it is from this arena that the globalization order – marked by both U.S. domination, and the total freedom given to the Russian successor of the USSR to lead colonial wars to maintain its empire debris – evolves, not surprising, the seeds of a form of "globalization of armed resistance."

On soil where oil-stakes and Israeli security are paramount, Western domination is particularly intense. Additionally, Arab-despotism completely inhibits the legalist's means of dispute. As such, the strengthening of Arab regimes will further the revolutionary rhetoric of Bin Laden.

Click here to view Part I.

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Noureddine Jebnoun is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Georgetown University's Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, in Washington, D.C.