Today al-Qaeda seems increasingly more like a magmatic and multiform universe made up of Chechens, Arabs, Pakistanis, Uzbeks and Pashtuns, that in a reductive and simplistic manner is portrayed as a jihadist “monolith.” Instead it really consists of criminal organizations that differ both in the manner in which they were founded, as well as in their tactics and operations. Hence there has been a move from a project, to a group and therefore to a network with a media-reported ideology and vision of the globalised contemporary world, and finally to a multiform galaxy of terror.