Explanations Of Terrorism Research Articles

Does Sharia Act as both a mediator and moderator in Salafi radicalism?

Salafi extremism, embraced by organizations such as the Islamic State, is a global religion-invoking phenomenon whose primary cause is not clearly elucidated in the literature. Unlike most existing models or explanations of terrorism that attempt to explain stages or factors associated with the radicalization of individuals, this study aims to identify the dominant causal pathway behind the onset of Salafi extremism. The independent and dependent variables and the variable associated with the causal pathway invoked here are public support levels for religious leaders as religious judges, the radical agenda they espouse, and the idea of Sharia as the law of the land, respectively. A linear regression analysis of the observational data from 20 nations revealed that the Sharia platform acts as both a causal mediator and moderator vis-à-vis the independent and dependent variables. The use of Kosovo as the control in this study minimizes or eliminates confounding bias, and the high magnitude of the computed coefficients of determination minimizes the contribution of any omitted variable. Thus, the preliminary conclusion is that the belief in Sharia as the law of the land, as advocated by religious leaders, provides the basis for radicalization and the emergence of Salafi jihadist groups.

The Theme-Enablers Theory of Salafi Extremism

Salafi (Islamist) extremism, embraced by organizations such as the Islamic State, is a global phenomenon whose primary cause is not clearly elucidated in the literature. Unlike most existing models or explanations of terrorism that attempt to explain stages or factors associated with the radicalization of individuals, the proposed theory aims to identify the dominant causal pathway behind the onset of Salafi extremism. Kosovo was used as a control group to establish Saudi Arabia-originated Wahhabism’s dominance as a radicalization source. The theory’s independent, dependent, and causal variables are public support levels for religious leaders as religious judges, the radical agenda they espouse, and the idea of Sharia as the law of the land, respectively. For nearly 20 nations listed in a 2013 Pew survey report titled “The World’s Muslims: Religion, Politics and Society,” the computed coefficients of determination for the public support levels for religious leaders and a radical agenda, Sharia and religious leaders, and Sharia and a radical agenda, were 0.83, 0.85, and 0.86, respectively, using linear regression methodology. The belief in Sharia as the law of the land, as advocated by religious leaders, provides the basis for radicalization and the emergence of Salafi jihadist groups.

An Integrated Theoretical Approach to the Persistence of Boko Haram Violent Extremism in Nigeria

The context and period in which a country experiences terrorist activities shape its understandings and explanations of terrorism, which can inform the nature of peacebuilding responses. Boko Haram...

Terrorized places and spaces: the geographical dimension of African terrorism

The common explanation of terrorism in literature is that it is a political phenomenon. But this paper argues that terrorism is place bound and location specific. It explores how geography connects to the understanding of terrorism as a territorialized phenomenon, stressing the importance of lagging regions which often serve as excuses for terrorism and safe havens for terrorist groups. The argument presented is premised on textual data, expert sources of information on terrorism, and examples largely drawn from Africa to illustrate the bifurcation of terrorism into territorial and non-territorial terrorist groups. A component of an effective counter-terrorism strategy, the paper concludes, must include revamping the depressed regions in Africa.

Interpretazioni del terrorismo: il primo dibattito scientifico italiano (1977-1984)

- Giovanni Mario Ceci The aim of the essay is to reconstruct the first scientific debate on Italian terrorism which took place in Italy from 1977 to 1984. The author singles out two main trends in this debate. The first, more consistent trend was made up of the analysis of social scientists, which fundamentally aimed at answering the question "why terrorism had exploded in Italy". The author singles out two main groups of hypothesis, under which he collects the most important shared interpretations in this debate. To the first group, concerned with the description of terrorist individuals, the author ascribes: various psychological-psychiatric explanations (terrorism as a phenomenon related to «youth identity», terrorism as «fantasmatic war», terrorism as a «fruit of the equilibrium of terror», terrorism as a «result of radical and extremist behaviour»); a political interpretation of terrorism as an expression of extremism; a sociological interpretation of terrorism (and more in general of violence) as a production of marginal social strata; and, finally, a philosophical explanation of terrorism as expression of «human conditions» repressed in their desiring vitality. To the second group of hypothesis, focused on the "crisis of the system", the author, instead, relates both the interpretation of terrorism as a response to the crisis of traditional values and the explanation of terrorism as a response to (or an outcome of) a stalemated political system. The second, minority trend of the debate was represented by the historiographical analyses, which aimed at elaborating a complex and articulate research on the «historical problem of Italian terrorism».

Teaching & Learning Guide for: Sociology of Terrorism and Counterterrorism: A Social Science Understanding of Terrorist Threat

Over the last decade, increased attention has been paid to terrorism, particularly to the new wave of terrorist groups, fundamentalist movements, and extremist organisations such as Al-Qaeda. September 11 marked the beginning of a turbulent phase in which states face a new kind of threat made up of a complex network of insidious revolutionary and nationalist forces. Such transformations have given rise to an unprecedented number of publications. However, both political violence and terrorism remain sources of endless disputes and controversies because of their political implications. At the same time, in the scientific community, terrorism studies lack conceptual and methodological uniformity. In his article, Domenico Tosini synthesises and discusses some major findings from this research. Courses using such a review will be confronted with the four major topics that any analysis of terrorism, to be comprehensive, should take into account: the definition of terrorism; its history and classification; its explanations; and an assessment of the consequences of counterterrorism policies.

TERRORISM AND DETERRENCE POLICY WITH TRANSNATIONAL SUPPORT1

This study provides an explanation of terrorism by examining interactions between the terrorist group with a minority as a potential pool of recruits and the government supported by a majority. A hawkish deterrence policy makes it more risky for terrorists to launch attacks, but heightens the anti‐government feeling of the terrorist group. In addition, the payoff for the government depends not only on the payoff loss associated with the level of terrorism, but also on the political payoff from the action itself of adopting a hawk policy due to its politicians’ vested interests. We first show that whether the deterrence policy should be ‘hawk to ‘dove is closely dependent on the relationships among the risk associated with terrorism, the anti‐government feeling of the terrorist group, and the political payoff for the government. This study then introduces transnational support enhancing the capability of a terrorist group to intensify its activity and shows that the emergence of transnational support may cause the government to reform its deterrence policy from ‘dove’ toward ‘hawk,’ with terrorism intensified in the society. 1 The authors would like to thank Ryuta R. Kato and an anonymous referee for their helpful comments and suggestions. The authors are responsible for any remaining errors. 2 Corresponding author. Email: kakinaka@iuj.ac.jp.

Liberal Ends, Illiberal Means

The field of environmental security, and in particular Thomas Homer-Dixon's model of environmental conflict, were heavily influenced by neo-Malthusian degradation narratives, which disproportionately blame population pressures for generating poverty, environmental degradation, migration and political violence. In turn, the presence of these degradation narratives provided an avenue through which population actors and interests could intersect with the emerging environmental security agenda in the 1990s. As part of a political strategy to engage the foreign policy establishment in the 1994 UN Population Conference in Cairo, private population funders supported environmental conflict research and its dissemination at a variety of venues. There was a general willingness to deploy racially-charged demographic alarmism, particularly concerning population and migration, in the representation of Third World threats. The result was a kind of ideological schizophrenia within the population community as some actors used the politics of fear to generate support for the Cairo conference, while others appealed to a feminist agenda of women's empowerment and reproductive health. Some did both at the same time. This case illustrates the tension between liberal foreign policy goals and the illiberal means and ideologies deployed to achieve them, and the critical role played by private philanthropy. It is a cautionary tale with relevance today as certain population agencies are employing demographic explanations of terrorism to attract conservative support for international family planning assistance.

Where do Terrorists Come From?

Which social, political and global factors affect the supply of labor to terrorist organizations? To answer this question, I propose a multivariate model at the national level which includes three classes of factors hypothesized to have a relationship with the supply of labor to terrorism. Drawing on motivation and political opportunism as explanations of terrorism, the three classes of factors are determined as social structural, political institutional, and global capitalist contexts. The data for the dependent variables is obtained from 28 countries between 1991 and 1997. After applying the negative binomial regression model in a cross sectional time series analysis to the afore-mentioned factors, I found that political institutional factors and nations' position in the world system are related to the origins of terrorists.

Terror, totem, and taboo: Reporting on a report

Should we analytically constitute or dissolve the category of terrorism? The Basque case is adduced to illustrate the dynamics of constructing and deconstructing a reified notion of terrorism. Two approaches are confronted: the legal‐technical work of a committee of terrorism experts and the ethnographic work of an anthropologist. The experts’ position that social science should be subservient to police and intelligence counter‐insurgency is questioned. The intellectual history of cultural anthropology is invoked for advancing a critique of current theories of terrorism; in particular, the resurgence of psychological fallacies and unicausal arguments in explanations of terrorism is reexamined. It is argued that ritual situations are typically not governed by intrinsic or instrumental means‐ends connections and that the search for positive causes may not be the best strategy for studying contexts of behavior, such as terrorism, in which the element of chance plays a key role. Anthropologists have learned a...