Local History and Its Global Representation

9/11 is clearly a turning point in world history, the event that marked the start of the twenty-first century. It posed a challenge to the territorial grounding of classic warfare and sounded the alarm as to the scope and range of transnational networks in this war. 2 Its effects are obvious not only in the transformation of space – the towers are gone from the horizon at the southern tip of Manhattan –, but also in movements to etch it onto the national memory. The goal is to enshrine the event in the local space and ensure its global representation.

Trajectories and Burials

The four human bombs that perpetrated the 7/7 attacks were all British nationals. Three of them were born in the United Kingdom to Pakistani parents. The fourth was born in Jamaica and arrived in the U.K. at a very early age. Examination of the trajectory of these four jihadis highlights the importance of the “gang” or “clique” phenomenon analyzed by Marc Sageman.5 Unlike the September 11, 2001 hijackers, who had traveled from Asia to Europe and from Saudi Arabia to the United States through complex networks to prepare the most spectacular attacks so far this century, the young men who perpetrated the London bombings had organized locally. The British authorities immediately labeled them “homegrown terrorists.” “the Home Office returned the bodies and body parts to the families with dignity so that they could organize "normal" funeral services in keeping with the Muslim religion”.

Trajectories and Burials

Unlike the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks, who had traveled all over and settled nowhere, the young men charged with 11M attacks were first-generation immigrants. They were born in Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, and Egypt. Some were legal migrants, others were not. Some were students, others shopkeepers. A few of them were naturalized Spanish. The burial follows the example of ETA s terrorist that is the return of the bodies to families “back home”. All had found in Spain a gateway to Europe, or a path to escape unemployment and poverty on the opposite shore of the Mediterranean. In addition to classic jihadi circuits – training in Afghanistan or Pakistan, combat in Bosnia or Chechnya –, the trajectories of the perpetrators of the Madrid attacks linked North Africa to Europe and interconnected the various European cities

The Territory at Stake

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict undeniably provides elements for an analysis in terms of territorial and non-territorial attachment, and local and global conflict. Jihad is in this case interpreted as a resistance movement in Palestine where the religious question is superposed on a territorial and geopolitical dimension.

The Question of Burial

If burial implies associating a name and a place,1 the burial of jihadis raises practical questions – about land and traces. For states, it often amounts to, reterritorializing the body. Faced with a discourse drawing on a religious repertoire calling for a non-territorial war, the challenge for states is to preserve their sacredness and develop a narrative to counteract the rhetoric denying their power in the name of a superior divine force that drives the martyr to his death.

The Homegrown Terrorist

The existence of homegrown terrorists came as a surprise to intelligence services and immigration, integration and assimilation specialists as well. The burial of the perpetrators of 7/7 places the homegrown terrorist phenomenon within the larger issue of territory and belonging that connects citizenship and transnational networks, nationality and the extent of the diaspora. The term radicalization appears in official and academic discourse with respect to the homegrown terrorists of July 7, 2005. These youths are described as locally established individuals, acting alone or in small groups, in any case autonomously, with limited resources and as amateurs, particularly in bomb-making.

Between Spain and the Maghreb

Spain is the gateway for entering the European Union from the south, a country of legal and illegal immigration from the African continent, particularly via Morocco and Algeria. The constant trips back and forth between Spain and the Maghreb made by the “birds of passage”4 that perpetrated the 11M attacks attest to the intensity of exchanges between the two shores of the Mediterranean. The Madrid attack thus brings to light transnational relations and actions, in that they transcend borders and defy Spain’s foreign, European and domestic policy as well as the policies of the countries of emigration.

Trajectories and Burials

The 9/11 jihadis were constantly on the move. They traveled continually, from Europe to Asia, from the Arabian Peninsula to America and within each of these continents, as though they came from no specific place and were headed to wherever the network took them. Their travel patterns indicate their ties with one or more other networks, their shift from one to the other, the invention of spontaneous and temporary clusters, with constant movements to and fro. No state claimed responsibility for their deed, no government took pride in their war, no authority sought to recover their bodies or even fragments of their bodies, as is customary for soldiers who died in combat. To this day, they are buried nowhere.

Conclusion

Engagement in jihad, perceived as a “war of liberation” and a “moral obligation”, fuels the myth of sacrifice, viewed as the only worthwhile death.1 Jihadis’ use of their bodies as weapons of war shows their mobility. The body becomes an instrument of power and enables them to create a new relationship to the state: the power of a mobile body versus that of a bounded state. But human bombs above all challenge the state’s monopoly on the legitimate use of violence, its conception of war and its power to punish, making the exercise of justice futile....

The End of Multiculturalism?

Multiculturalism has thus shifted from the cultural and social sphere to the security realm in both the United Kingdom and the United States. Cameron thus criticized the dual dimension of the failure of multiculturalism: communitarian – a community withdrawn into itself – and identarian – in terms of values, naturally with political consequences. This was bound to ignite controversy in a country that had made multiculturalism the very foundation of its integration policy. Integration had come to a standstill due to a very small minority that places specific values above universal liberal values. The debate on multiculturalism focuses especially on its negative effects on integration, a key notion that reflects at once a normative and political approach. But the greatest challenge to multiculturalism policies is the power of transnationalism. While multiculturalism, by its very principle, seeks to institute respect for differences within a common space of political participation, a solidarity transcending borders has taken hold, generating new balances of power. In reaction, states are reasserting their prerogatives over immigration, integration and citizenship