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left them militarily isolated, normatively contested and co-opted, and ideologically unpopular in most
Muslim states. 9/11 allowed al-Qaeda to leap beyond this marginalization, reinvigorating the Islamist
challenge to the Muslim world’s status quo and, simultaneously, advancing al-Qaeda’s narrow
organizational interests against rival Islamist groups. 9/11, in short, was framed by al-Qaeda’s ideological
worldview, and this normative frame was advanced by the strategic innovation of 9/11 – a large scale
attack within the United States -- and this advanced al-Qaeda’s ability to mobilize transnational support
and have continued influence.
More importantly from an international relations perspective, however, al-Qaeda’s frame was
self-consciously international and 9/11 put this frame on the international agenda, challenging with its
Manichean ideology long established norms of the international order. This internationalization of the
Islamist agenda is al-Qaeda’s primary innovation. It raised al-Qaeda’s profile above those of other
Islamist groups, demonstrated the fluid interplay among domestic, regional, and international politics
and, with 9/11, transformed a transnational, non-state, normative actor into a key pole around which
international relations revolves. The powerful impact of al-Qaeda’s alternative normative conception of
the international order and the support this has mobilized intersects tellingly with international relations
debates. The aim of al-Qaeda -- as with any normative movement, religiously-identified or not -- is to
shift perceptions of identity and what that identity implies for political action by its members at both the
domestic and international levels. The question from a theoretical perspective is, simply, if in this case
that matters: has al-Qaeda been a variable impacting on changes in global politics and, if so, with what
theoretical implications?
While al-Qaeda is a minority movement in the Muslim world and its normative constructs are
contested, the paper identifies specific impacts on global political structures that have flowed out of
attacks on the U.S., attacks that came to a dramatic head with 9/11. This attests to al-Qaeda’s
effectiveness as a norm entrepreneur in affecting international relations. First, al-Qaeda has worked with
some success toward restructuring global politics around a Muslim-non-Muslim axis. 9-11 and the
military response it predictably evoked worked toward fulfilling this Manichean conception, one which
runs counter to historical and contemporary realities that remain considerably more complex than such a
culturist caricature. Second, al-Qaeda has sought to Islamicize the Muslim world’s conceptualization of
global politics, inserting religious identity into international relations. 9-11 and events it inspired have
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