The BBC looks at the growing backlash against al Qaeda in some surprising circles, but also notes that British Muslim youth are still big fans of violent jihad, so don't count the premiere global Islamist terror group out yet.
Al-Qaeda's violent methods and tactics have been coming under mounting criticism this year from Islamist scholars who once supported it.
Osama bin Laden's defiant message has inspired many MuslimsOne by one they have been coming out in public to denounce the organisation's actions as being counterproductive.
But at the same time, a leading British de-radicaliser says the number of young British Muslims attracted to violent extremism is growing - and, he claims, the UK government is partly to blame.
In the living room of his London home, the Libyan former jihadist Nu'man Bin Othman reads out part of the open letter he sent recently to al-Qaeda's no 2 and chief strategist, Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri.
He tells him that al-Qaeda's tactics have been a failure and - most damningly - its methods un-Islamic.
He even questions its very claim to speak for Muslims.
Comrades in arms
What is so striking about this is that Bin Othman is no armchair commentator, he is a former comrade-in-arms of Osama Bin Laden.
However ...
It is almost as if there are two separate tectonic plates, grinding against each other in opposite directions.
At one level there is the intellectual debate, the Arab thinkers within the jihadi movement.
These are the people who are standing back and questioning whether al-Qaeda's extreme methods aren't actually doing more harm than good to Muslims.
But then down at the grass roots level, things are moving the other way, because there are still growing numbers of potential recruits to violent jihad, including in Britain.
Often these recruits have only a shallow knowledge of Islam, and they are far less impressed by theological debate than they are by more day-to-day, down-to-earth factors like TV reports of western airstrikes on civilians in Afghanistan or the presence of US and British troops in Iraq.
With conflicts still raging in those two countries, and the Palestinian question unsettled, it is still too early to predict with any certainty which way al-Qaeda's fortunes will go.