Few countries have been unaffected by the attacks of 9/11 and the Global War on Terror (GWOT) that followed . But with the coming of age of a new generation not witness to the violence directly, and the emergence of other crises in the form of environmental degradation, right-wing ultra-nationalism, and Russian expansionism, the fears about “jihadists” have taken the back bench in the North Atlantic world, even if they remain a high existential threat for other countries, such as those of the Sahel. In the United States, the Global War on Terror is now completely absent from public speeches, electoral platforms, national debates, and news headlines. One may be tempted to conclude that the Global War on Terror is fading away to become old history. However, a more careful look reveals that two decades after 9/11 the GWOT has not been de-prioritized, but rather dramatically expanded, institutionalized,   and   normalized. It has now become our “new normal,” which persists without grabbing news headlines or even our attention in everyday encounters with its afterlives in the form of added security, surveillance, and legal regimes. What used to be exceptional is now fully integrated in our daily routines. While large-scale military campaigns against terrorist groups continue (like the decade-long French     operation     in     Sahel ), the GWOT has largely gone stealth. It is now being conducted through a myriad of (often permanent) secretive special forces operations and drone    warfare rather than highly mediatized bombing campaigns, like the one against the Islamic State. Its theatre of operation is no longer limited to a few countries but has - since 9/11 - gone truly global , especially under the U.S. President Barack Obama . Disturbingly for its critics , the new normalcy is largely unquestioned and absent from public scrutiny, national debate, and judicial oversight despite its expansion and creeping institutionalization, thus causing a real democratic      problem for fundamental civil liberties , the rule of law, and the separation of powers. The GWOT has led to the creation of veritable national security and surveillance states, buttressed by radically expansive national security budgets and executive privileges as well as new tools of surveillance and repression. Each time countries like France (one of the most targeted Western states) suffers a terrorist attack , including minor “lone wolf” attacks such as the murder of the schoolteacher Samuel   Paty , a     new     set     of     laws     and     counter-terrorism measures   are   passed almost instantly, adding to the already multi-layered structure of the nation’s dense and intricate counter-terrorism apparatus. These developments point to three critical post- 9/11 logics that continue to shape the world and threaten liberal democracies. First, special temporary and exceptional measures passed under the shock of popular emotions after a terrorist attack are becoming permanently integrated into law and routine state practice, such as the exorbitant    special powers initially granted for a short amount of time to the police, military, intelligence agencies, and governments under state of emergency situations. For example, the emergency security measures taken by the French Government in the aftermath   of   the   Bataclan   attack , while originally intended to last a few months, have now been constitutionalized to give executive, administrative, and police sweeping powers in the name of added security. Second, even more alarmingly, once written into common law, those new executive, administrative, and police prerogatives are being used against perfectly non-violent individuals and groups that have nothing to do with terrorism. Here too, concrete examples have been provided by the French government, which soon started to use new anti-terrorism   bills to ban   protests , limit free   speech   and   freedom   of consciousness , silence political     dissent , and crack down on anti-racist, civil   liberties NGOs, and environmental    activists . One of the more salient examples of the expanded crackdown was the December 2020 dissolution - through executive   decree - of France’s most prominent anti-discrimination group, the Collective Against Islamophobia or CCIF, even in the face of vocal condemnation by groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch . Third, we are seeing that the Global War on Terror in the North Atlantic world, and even in the MENA region, has gradually and incrementally morphed and metastasized into something of a completely different nature: a fight against the vague and loosely defined threat of religious (read: Islamic) “radicalization” or the even vaguer enemy of “political Islam.” Despite numerous academic and empirical studies finding no    causal    relation between religiosity , religious   creed , and terrorism , several states continue to espouse the faulty “slippery slope” (or “conveyor   belt” ) theory that growing religiosity is an entry point into radicalism or an “antechamber”   to   violent   Jihadism . Under this approach, the difference between non-violent and violent extremism has all but disappeared. Both are considered as no more than two   sides of the same coin. Again, it is in France where these dangerous logics appear on full display. Since the 2012 attacks in Paris, the country has witnessed a series of terrorist acts, including the Charlie Hebdo    shooting    and Bataclan massacre. With these attacks as justification, President Macron has called for the building of a new, Orwellian- type “vigilance   society” in order to defeat what he apocalyptically called “the Islamist hydra.” Under Macron, the “ fight     against     Islamist separatism” is a national priority. The country has passed a seminal law    against    separatism, and created an intricate, multi-layered, and intrusive institutional architecture of counter- terrorism called the “Systematic Obstruction Policy,” which aims to eradicate the potentiality of jihadism by cracking down on any individual or group considered complicit with “political Islam” or “Islamism.” 1 In this expansion, the war against jihadist groups is transformed into an attempt to eradicate all the ideas, ideologies, beliefs, and forms of Islamic religiosity and Muslim practices that allegedly provide the terrain or justifications for actual terrorist violence. In other words, France has now made “Islamism” - framed as “Islamist   separatism” or “political Islam” - an existential threat. The battle against “Islamism” is perceived as a matter of civilizational struggle and survival. The Global War on Terror may have started as a military operation directed against al-Qaeda and the Taliban. But since then, despite its absence from the headlines, it has expanded and ramified in a myriad of directions, including an ideological-religious-civilizational “war on Islamism” in France, one of whose goals appears to be nothing less than fundamentally changing the nature of Islam and liberal democracy.