Even with the dearth of reliable information on many militants, documenting the prevalence of movement amongst them is a relatively easy task. Relocation is amongst the most common and significant characteristics they share. As Roy writes, the ‘link between territory and nationalism, and … between deterritorialisation and radical Islamisation, is quite constant’.

Actual deterritorialisation can and often does lead to ideological deterritorialisation, in turn indispensable to militant Salafism as it exists in the West. The dynamic of movement helps to undermine ‘that sense of the naturalness and givenness of territorialised “national belonging”’. For some, including militant Salafists, its place is taken with the idea of the ummah, a transnational religious identification that consciously rejects territory as a determinant of identity. They are not alone. Other deterritorialised visions are an increasingly common motivation for political action. As Tololyan notes: