Terrorism

Terrorism is an interdisciplinary topic that requires the contributions of experts in the areas of history, political science, social science, philosophy, religion, psychology, sociology, finance, strategic studies, international relations, criminal justice, crime prevention and control, public safety, warfare, counterterrorism theory and practice, anthropology, languages, and cultural studies. History, the social sciences, political science, and psychology are especially useful in understanding the origins, reasons, justifications, motivations, and changes in the meaning and definition of terrorism. The recent emergence of terrorism, which is inspired by religious fundamentalism and ethnicseparatist elements rather than political ideology, serves as but one critical example of the complex nature of this phenomenon. For these reasons, diverse theoretical approaches are needed to explain the worldwide growth and expansion of terrorism within the complex matrix of social, cultural, economic, religious, psychological, political, and strategic variables (Ross 196; Sharif 1).

Terrorism is political in its objectives and motives; violent or threatening violence; meant to have wide and deep psychological repercussions beyond the particular victim or target; committed by an organization with a command hierarchy that can be identified or a cell configuration that permits conspiratorial activities; and carried out by a subnational group or nonstate body. Thus, terrorism can be defined as the deliberate generation, instillation, and exploitation of fear into a competing group, party, government, or public opinion through violence or the threat of violence with the goal of introducing political change (Noble 18).

The Definition Of Terrorism

The statutory definition that the U.S. government uses to track and keep statistics on terrorism is as follows: “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience” [22 U.S.C. 26f (d)]. By this definition, terrorism has several elements:

Premeditation. There must be an intent and a prior decision to commit an act that entails this type of violence.

Political motivation, thus eliminating criminal violence for monetary gain or personal revenge. Of course, criminal violence can have political repercussions too as it generates more and more fear of crime. And, on the other hand, terror is often connected with criminal activities but its goal is serving a greater good as defined by the terrorists.

Bruce Hoffman (198) and Walter Laqueur (19) state that we are not only witnessing a resurgence and expansion of terrorist groups motivated by religion, but the situation is made even more difficult by the fact that religious terrorists behave differently than ethnic and nationalistic terrorists. The reason is that they are not constrained by the same factors that may inhibit other types of terrorists. In Hoffman's view, religious terrorists differ from political terrorists in many ways. Holy terror represents a value system that is opposite to “secular terror,” secular terrorists function within the dominant political and cultural reality that they to replace with their own. Religious or “holy” terrorists are under no such constraint. Although fundamentalist and violent extremists may be attracted to any religion (Sargent 95), for holy terrorists the world is a battlefield between the forces of good and evil, light ...