Marc Sageman’s Connection to Four Lions Terrorism Comedy

The new film Four Lions, directed by Chris Morris, may be a comedy; but its website doesn't take terrorism lightly.

According to Dennis Lim's recent article in the New York Times, "The Web site for 'Four Lions' (four-lions.co.uk/) features a background reading list, including Mr. Sageman’s 'Understanding Terror Networks' and Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit’s 'Occidentalism' a history of anti-Western thought (which Mr. Morris was rereading while in New York)."

Lim connects Four Lion's presentation of terrorists as goofballs "to what the former C.I.A. official Marc Sageman has called 'the bunch-of-guys theory' of terrorism, which accounts for peer pressure and social forces."