And Autoplectic in a similar vein: "Or they may be trying to kick-start a different social movement altogether -because the previous models have failed- which hasn't yet reached crucial tippings points."
But all the signs are that support for Islamic fundamentalism is on the wane. See the recent Pew Research:
"Concerns over Islamic extremism, extensive in the West even before this month's terrorist attacks in London, are shared to a considerable degree by the publics in several predominantly Muslim nations surveyed. Nearly three-quarters of Moroccans and roughly half of those in Pakistan, Turkey and Indonesia see Islamic extremism as a threat to their countries. At the same time, most Muslim publics are expressing less support for terrorism than in the past. Confidence in Osama bin Laden has declined markedly in some countries and fewer believe suicide bombings that target civilians are justified in the defense of Islam."
http://pewglobal.org/reports/display.php?ReportID=248
Bearing in mind that the 9/11 attacks were a strategy settled on *after* the failure of Islamists to hold on to popular support in Algeria, where even government terror did not persuade the population to support Islamist terror. It was the judgement that the popular mass base was iredeemably corrupted that led to the strategy of directly confronting the West.
Those attacks did have some propagandistic value amongst populations that felt especially hopeless, but it has not been enduring,not least because it is a strategy that holds the mass of people in contempt.
My experience is that the people who are most excited about the 'radicalising' potential of the bombs are those demoralised western activists who long for a saviour from the east to sweep away all the old rubbish, and achieve the social change that seems so elusive to us all.