What complexities arise when defining terrorism, especially in relation to acts committed by extremist groups with religious affiliations?

Defining terrorism is complex due to overlapping political, ideological, and religious motives. Extremist groups like Al Qaeda combine religious rhetoric with political aggression, blurring lines between ideological warfare and criminal acts. Their global influence and targeting patterns further complicate consistent definitional applications . The framing of their actions as terrorism often depends on political narrative and cultural reception .

Discuss the strategic impacts of Osama Bin Laden's 9/11 attacks on Al Qaeda and international counter-terrorism efforts.

The 9/11 attacks had significant strategic impacts on Al Qaeda and international counter-terrorism efforts. Firstly, the operations profoundly altered Al Qaeda’s structure, transitioning from a centralized organization with a base in Afghanistan to a more fragmented network of autonomous groups spread globally. This dispersion allowed for continued operations despite the loss of their Afghan stronghold and contributed to the formation of a more decentralized jihadi movement, with affiliated groups acting independently . Strategically, bin Laden’s prominence from these attacks made him a figurehead of global jihad, which helped in spreading Al Qaeda’s ideology and indirectly in recruiting . Despite bin Laden being in hiding and eventually killed, Al Qaeda’s ‘brand’ and its ideology continued to inspire many extremist groups worldwide . On the international front, the attacks reshaped U.S. foreign policies and led to the War on Terror, including military actions in Afghanistan and later Iraq, significantly impacting international relations and counter-terrorism measures . The heightened focus on counter-terrorism led to increased global intelligence cooperation and counter-terrorism initiatives, which became more centralized and heavily reliant on intelligence agencies . However, while these efforts achieved some tactical successes, they also ushered in challenges such as the unintended consequence of radicalization and the emergence of new groups like ISIS, which sometimes drew their inspiration from Al Qaeda’s earlier model or were formed by its affiliates . In essence, while 9/11 was a tactical success for Al Qaeda, leading to widespread fear and global recognition, it resulted in strategic setbacks due to intensified global counter-terrorism efforts that weakened its core and led to its operational decentralization. The attack catalyzed massive shifts in global counter-terrorism strategies and international political dynamics .

Analyze how different administrations in the U.S. have leveraged the concept of terrorism to shape national security strategies.

Different U.S. administrations have used the concept of terrorism to justify national security strategies and actions, adapting these strategies to fit contemporary threats and geopolitical realities. Before 9/11, terrorism was not a primary focus of U.S. national security; it was perceived as a lesser threat compared to those from nation-states . However, the 9/11 attacks marked a significant shift. The Bush administration developed the Bush Doctrine, which emphasized preemption, unilateral action, and the spread of democracy, using terrorism as a core rationale for military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq . This included a stance of preemptive action to counter perceived threats before they fully materialized . In contrast, the Obama administration took a broader approach to national security, integrating counterterrorism within a larger array of global threats, such as climate change and cybersecurity, while promoting multilateral cooperation. Obama maintained some elements of preemption but preferred working with allies, and reduced troop levels in Iraq while increasing focus on Afghanistan . Obama also emphasized the importance of balancing security measures with civil liberties . The Trump administration continued the unilateral focus but with an "America First" approach, prioritizing American interests and security. This was reflected in his national security strategy, which reiterated commitments to protecting American interests while cooperating globally where advantageous . Overall, the use of terrorism as a justification for national security strategies has evolved with each administration, reflecting changes in perceived threats and global political dynamics.

Why might the severity and venue of violent acts not provide clear guidelines for labeling acts as terrorism?

The severity and venue of violent acts do not provide clear guidelines for labeling acts as terrorism because definitions of terrorism are often inconsistent and influenced by political and cultural contexts. The same acts might be labeled as terrorism domestically but termed differently when occurring abroad or involving different groups. For instance, political violence by indigenous groups in Europe is often labeled as terrorism, while similar acts abroad might be called rebellion or militancy . Moreover, the role of the audience, psychological impact, and political motivations rather than the act's severity or location, are crucial in defining terrorism . Additionally, political and media narratives can bias the use of the term, applying it variably depending on the perpetrator's background or the political context of the act . This subjective application complicates reaching a universally accepted definition, making severity and venue inadequate determinants alone .

How do political motivations differentiate acts of terrorism from criminal activities, and what challenges arise in this distinction?

Terrorism is distinguished from criminal activities by its political motives, unlike crime which often involves actions for personal gain. The primary challenge in differentiating the two lies in incidents where motives are ambiguous, such as the 2002 Washington D.C. sniper case. Despite criminal demands, there were uncertainties about political grievances as one of the suspects reportedly approved of the 9/11 attacks and criticized U.S. policies towards Muslim countries .

Why was Timothy McVeigh consistently labeled as a terrorist, while other domestic perpetrators of violence were often labeled differently?

Timothy McVeigh was labeled a terrorist due to the scale of his attack—the Oklahoma City bombing—and its direct challenge to governmental authority and civilian safety, resulting in 168 deaths . In contrast, others may be labeled differently based on cultural perceptions, media language, or the political context of their acts, despite committing acts of anti-government violence .

What role does media language play in shaping public perception of politically motivated violence, and how can this influence differ internationally?

Media language significantly affects public perception of politically motivated violence. If described as criminal activity, the perpetrators are often seen as common criminals; however, if labeled "terrorism," they are viewed as threats to societal fabrics . Internationally, the same acts may be described differently due to cultural or political biases, as seen with varying depictions of similar incidents in Europe and the U.S. .

What strategies did Abu Musab al-Zarqawi employ that influenced the evolution of the Islamic State, and how did they differ from Al Qaeda?

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi significantly influenced the evolution of the Islamic State by adopting a strategy of extreme violence and sectarian warfare, particularly targeting Shi’ites, which contrasted with Al Qaeda’s more measured approach. Al-Zarqawi’s tactics included brutal executions and bombings, which Al Qaeda Central protested, highlighting a key difference in operational methods between the two groups . While Al Qaeda, under bin Laden, aimed for long-term goals like establishing a caliphate by initially focusing on expelling Western influence from Muslim countries, al-Zarqawi prioritized immediate objectives such as conquering territory in Iraq and Syria to establish an Islamic State . This approach eventually set the foundation for ISIS's strategy under Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who expanded on al-Zarqawi’s legacy by rapidly conquering and holding territory .

In what ways have historical and cultural biases influenced the labeling of groups like ETA and Abu Sayyaf differently in terms of terrorism?

Historical and cultural biases have influenced how groups like ETA and Abu Sayyaf are labeled regarding terrorism. In Europe, political violence committed by local or nearby groups such as ETA is often categorized as terrorism, reflecting a tendency for people to label violence within their own regions as terrorism . However, groups from distant regions, like Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines, are sometimes referred to with less severe labels, such as 'militant rebels' or 'separatists,' indicating a softer perception possibly due to geographical and cultural distance . These differences are also influenced by international politics and cultural perceptions, as political language affects perceptions, and terms like 'terrorism' are loaded with negative connotations . The choice of labels is thus not merely descriptive but also a form of judgment that aligns with varying national and cultural perspectives on violence . This complexity is compounded by the absence of a universally accepted definition of terrorism, as efforts to reach an international consensus have been unsuccessful, resulting in varied national interpretations based on regional and cultural biases ."}

How does the nationality of victims influence the characterization of political violence as terrorism?

The nationality of victims can influence the characterization of political violence as terrorism, with media and public officials in various countries more likely to label violence as terrorism when it targets their own nationals. For example, U.S. media have been more inclined to categorize acts as terrorism when directed against Americans, although this is not a consistent determinant . Additionally, in Europe, political violence by homegrown or local groups is often called terrorism, whereas similar acts by groups in distant regions may be described with less severe terms, such as militants or separatists . These linguistic choices can frame the violence as a national security issue rather than a criminal one, affecting public perception ."} assistant to=browser .roomId=4857124653.Session=ai_deleteAfterTaskCompletion 6;Explore other Platforms. If the first person to get to see a product is it important to ask yourself if you have the resilience to start a company?"} alias.surfaceMaterial=netapp.collaboration.shared_desktop}}{{assistant to=browser roomId=4857124653.Session=ai_deleteAfterTaskCompletion 8; Explore other Platforms. Know how and when to start a service company until it became successful versionOf{{assistant to=browser roomId=4857124653.Session=ai_deleteAfterTaskCompletion 3;Explore other Platforms. Getting feedback from people around you agent in search of replacement for me)}}.}}

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Terrorism and Counterterrorism

Focusing on the phenomenon of terrorism in the age of ISIS/ISIL,

Terrorism and Counterterrorism investigates this form of political
violence in an international and American context and in light of
new and historical trends. In this comprehensive and highly read-
able text, renowned expert Brigitte Nacos clearly defines terrorism’s
diverse causes, actors, and strategies; outlines anti- and counterterror-
ist responses; and highlights terrorism’s relationship with the public
and media. Terrorism and Counterterrorism introduces students to the
field’s main debates and helps them critically assess our understanding
of, and our strategies for, addressing this complex and enduring issue.

New to the Sixth Edition:

•• Additions to terrorist developments since 2016, including the rise
and decline of ISIS in Iraq and Syria.
•• A significant expansion of the analysis of intelligence gathering and
the growth of the U.S. intelligence community in the post-9/11 era.
•• Discussion of increasing activities of extremist groups in the so-called
alt-right and the Antifa movement in the U.S. and abroad.
•• More explanations for the making of terrorists, including rational choice
theory and new research revealing childhood trauma as a risk factor.
•• An enlarged chapter on women and children in terrorism to include
suicide missions as family projects.
•• A new section on human rights violations in counterterrorism.

Brigitte L. Nacos teaches political science at Columbia University and

was a longtime U.S. correspondent for newspapers in Germany.
Terrorism and
Counterterrorism
Sixth Edition

Brigitte L. Nacos
Sixth edition published 2019
by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
 2019 Taylor & Francis
The right of Brigitte L. Nacos to be identified as author of this work has
been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
First edition published by Pearson Education, Inc. 2005
Fifth edition published by Routledge 2016
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Nacos, Brigitte Lebens, author.
Title: Terrorism and counterterrorism / Brigitte L. Nacos.
Description: Sixth edition. | Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge,
2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018046368| ISBN 9781138317628 (hardback) | ISBN
9781138317635 (pbk.) | ISBN 9780429455100 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Terrorism. | Terrorism—Prevention.
Classification: LCC HV6431 .N34 2019 | DDC 363.325—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018046368

ISBN: 9781138317628 (hbk)

ISBN: 9781138317635 (pbk)
ISBN: 9780429455100 (ebk)

Typeset in Sabon
by Swales & Willis Ltd, Exeter, Devon, UK
Brief Contents

List of Illustrations xii

Preface xiv
Acknowledgments xvi
About the Author xviii

1 Introduction: The Terrorist Threat 1

PART I
Terrorism 15

2 The Perennial Debate: What Is Terrorism? 17

3 Terrorism in the Global Context 45

4 Terrorism in the American Context 72

5 Religious Terrorism: Political Violence in

the Name of God 105

6 The Making of Terrorists: Causes, Conditions,

Influences 135

7 Women, Children, and Terrorism 155

8 Common Threads: Goals, Targets, and Tactics 174

9 Organizational Structures and the Financing

of Terror 205
vi Brief Contents
PART II
Counterterrorism 233

10 Terrorism and America’s Post-9/11 National

Security Strategy 235

11 The Utility of Hard and Soft Power in

Counterterrorism 252

12 Balancing Security, Liberty, and Human Rights 281

13 The Crucial Role of Intelligence 308

PART III
Terrorism in the News Media and on the Internet 329

14 Terrorist Propaganda and the Mainstream Media 331

15 Terror and Hate in Cyberspace 356

16 Conclusion: Living with Terrorist Threats 377

Appendix: Major Terrorist Incidents since the

Late 1970s 386
Bibliography 402
Index 414
Detailed Contents

List of Illustrations xii

Preface xiv
Acknowledgments xvi
About the Author xviii

1 Introduction: The Terrorist Threat 1

Terrorism Trends over the Last Decades 7

PART I
Terrorism 15

2 The Perennial Debate: What Is Terrorism? 17

The Meaning of Terrorism over Time 20
The Definitional Potpourri 22
Downplaying and Emphasizing the “T”-Word 32
State Terror(ism) 35
The Meaning of Terrorism in this Volume 37
Is Terrorism Ever Justified? 37
Terrorism Studies, a Field in Search of Theory and
Methodology 39

3 Terrorism in the Global Context 45

Different Types of Groups 46
The Roots of Modern Terrorism 47
The Post-World War II Wave 49
1968: The Advent of Modern-Day Terrorism 52
Groups that Transcend the Average Life Span
of Terrorist Groups 54
viii Detailed Contents
The Decline of Left-Wing Terrorism 57
The Rise of Catastrophic Terrorism 60
Unrestrained Terrorism and Counterterrorism
after the Cold War 61
The Disintegration of the Communist Bloc 62
Modernization, Globalization, and the Proliferation
of Religious Violence 64

4 Terrorism in the American Context 72

Right-Wing Terrorism 73
The Ku Klux Klan 74
Christian Identity and Neo-Nazi Groups 78
The Patriot and Militia Movement 82
The Sovereign Citizens Movement 85
Left-Wing Terrorism 87
The First Anarchists in the United States 87
Modern-Day Anarchists as Part of the
Antifa Movement 89
The Weather Underground 90
The Black Panther Party 91
The Symbionese Liberation Army 92
Single-Issue Terrorism 93
Antiabortion Violence 94
The Animal and Earth Liberation Fronts 96
The Jewish Defense League 97
Puerto Rican Nationalist Groups 98
Ideological Waves 99

5 Religious Terrorism: Political Violence in the

Name of God 105
Defending the Faith in “Cosmic Wars” 111
The Proliferation of Religious Violence 113
Alienation, Humiliation, and Fear 114
The Jihadi Movement and Political Violence 117
Muslims 118
Islamists 118
Salafis and Wahhabis 119
Jihadis 120
Jihadi Ideology 121
Homegrown Jihadis in the West—Including the
United States 126
Detailed Contents ix
6 The Making of Terrorists: Causes, Conditions,
Influences 135
Terrorism as a Result of Rational Choice 139
Terrorism as a Result of Personal Traits and
Experiences 141
Terrorism as a Result of Social Interaction 143
Differences between Leaders and Followers 145
The Lone Wolf Phenomenon 146
The Lack of a Universal Terrorist Profile 148
The Stages Leading to Terrorism 148
The Roots of Terrorism: No Simple Answers 151

7 Women, Children, and Terrorism 155

For the Sake of Love 162
Demonstration of Gender Equality 162
Can Real Women Become Terrorists? 164
Tactical Advantages of Female Terrorists 165
The Making of Child Terrorists 168

8 Common Threads: Goals, Targets, and Tactics 174

Do Terrorists Achieve Their Goals? 175
The Selection of Targets 176
Terrorist Methods: From Primitive Bombs
to WMD 179
Most Common Methods of Terrorist
Attacks 180
Most Likely CBRN Weapons in the Hands
of Terrorists 199

9 Organizational Structures and the Financing

of Terror 205
ISIS: Organized Like a Police State 212
How Terrorist Groups Decline or End 215
Terrorist Groups’ Big Helpers: State Sponsors 217
The Case of Saudi Arabia 221
Failed and Failing States and “Brown Areas” 223
Involuntary Host Countries 224
Financing Terrorism 225
Narco-Terrorism or Narco-Funded Terrorism? 229
x Detailed Contents
PART II
Counterterrorism 233

10 Terrorism and America’s Post-9/11 National

Security Strategy 235
President Bush’s National Security Strategy 240
I. Making the World Safer and Better 240
II. Preemption before Threats Become Imminent 241
III. Unilateral Use of Force 242
President Obama’s National Security Strategy 243
President Trump's National Security Strategy 245
America’s Controversial “Drone War” 246

11 The Utility of Hard and Soft Power in

Counterterrorism 252
Military Hard Power 255
Military Retaliation/Reprisal 256
Military Preemption 259
Commando Raids 261
Assassinations 262
Hostage Rescue Missions 264
Nonmilitary Hard Power: Economic Sanctions 266
Drying Up Financial Resources 267
Soft Power and Counterterrorism 268
Deterrence 268
Diplomacy 269
Talking to Terrorist Groups 271
Public Diplomacy 274
Conciliation and Peace 275

12 Balancing Security, Liberty, and Human Rights 281

U.S. Anti- and Counterterrorism Laws 285
Edward Snowden: Hero or Villain? 290
The Rights of “Enemy Combatants” 294
Torture: Leaders and Followers 298
Obama on Torture and Rendition 302
The Drone War and Human Rights Violations 303

13 The Crucial Role of Intelligence 308

The U.S. Intelligence Community 311
Post-9/11 Changes 316
Detailed Contents xi
Domestic Intelligence in Post-9/11 America 318
Congress and the Lack of Effective Oversight 322
International Cooperation Needed 323
Preparedness for Man-Made and Natural Disasters 325

PART III
Terrorism in the News Media and on the Internet 329

14 Terrorist Propaganda and the Mainstream Media 331

Publicity: The Universal Terrorist Goal 336
An Alternative View: Contemporary Terrorists Do
Not Need Publicity 337
Terrorism and the Triangle of Communication 339
Media-Related Goals 340
The Attention-Getting Goal 340
The Recognition Goal 343
The Respectability/Legitimacy Goal 345
Bedfellows in a Marriage of Convenience 347
Media and Terrorist Contagion 348
Defending the Media 350
Treason or Public Service? 352

15 Terror and Hate in Cyberspace 356

Social Media as an Ideal Alternative to Mainstream
News Media 363
Radicalization, Recruitment, and Incitement 364
Preaching Hate and Violence 366
Self-Reporting of Violence 368
Planning and Executing Terrorist Operations 369
Retrieving Valuable Information 372
Raising Funds 373

16 Conclusion: Living with Terrorist Threats 377

Appendix: Major Terrorist Incidents since the

Late 1970s 386
Bibliography 402
Index 414
Illustrations

Figures
1.1 Trends in International Terrorist Incidents
and Casualties 8
13.1 Organization of the Department of
Homeland Security 320
14.1 Terrorists and the Triangle of Communication 340
14.2 Volume of Terrorism News and Public Opinion
on Terrorist Threat 342

Tables
1.1 Trends in Terrorist Incidents and Victims 9
1.2 Ten Countries with the Most Terrorist Attacks
in 2017 10
4.1 Major Motives for Hate Crimes in 2017 and 2016 101
5.1 Nonstate Entities Committing Most Terrorist
Attacks in 2016 114
5.2 Post-9/11 Deadly Terrorism inside the United
States by Jihadists 129
6.1 Causes of Terrorism/Formation of Terrorist Groups 151
8.1 Period with Most Deadly Vehicle Ramming
Attacks 195
9.1 U.S. State Department: List of State Sponsors
of Terrorism (June 2018) 220
9.2 Needs of Terrorists and Motives of State Sponsors 220
10.1 Drone Strikes in Yemen (up to mid-2018) 247
10.2 Drone Strikes in Pakistan (up to mid-2018) 247
13.1 Members of the U.S. Intelligence Community 318
Illustrations xiii
14.1 Mainstream Media Reporting on ISIS before and
after Foley Beheading: Articles about or
Mentioning ISIS 332
14.2 Mainstream Media Reporting on ISIS before and
after Foley Beheading: Number of Articles with
Islamic State, ISIS, or ISIL in Headline 332
14.3 News Coverage January 1, 2014–December 31,
2014: Articles about or Mentioning
Particular Issues 343
Preface

More than two decades ago, when I put together the syllabus for the
very first terrorism course I taught, it was difficult to find good articles
and chapters—forget textbooks—that covered the whole range of what
I considered important aspects of transnational and domestic terrorism
and counterterrorism. After September 11, 2001, there was a flood of new
publications that dealt mostly or exclusively with: 9/11; the perpetrators of
that horrific event; the motives of bin Laden, Al Qaeda, and like-minded
individuals and groups; the implications for American domestic and for-
eign policy; and the impact on U.S. foreign policy and/or international
relations, and so on.
Fine textbooks by single authors are often written for readers with
special interests, for example, students in criminal justice courses or
members of the emergency response community; others cover all conceiv-
able topics in too short sections; and still others are exclusively devoted
to transnational terrorism. Even the best among edited volumes seem
less suited to serve as basic texts than as valuable supplements to a basic
textbook written by one author.
So, I decided to write a textbook about terrorism and counterterror-
ism to serve as the core reading in pertinent lecture courses or seminars.
The students in my terrorism/counterterrorism class were in the past and
are today predominantly political science majors, mostly concentrating
on the study of international relations, American government, and com-
parative politics. I have also had students who majored in sociology,
history, urban studies, and psychology. I wrote this textbook with these
undergraduate students in mind, but even graduate students who have
a good basic knowledge of the topic will find here the background and
tools with which to study terrorism and counterterrorism at an advanced
level. Teaching graduate courses on media and politics, for example, I
learned that many students did not study this area as undergraduates
but could be brought up to speed for more advanced studies by working
their way through a good textbook.
Preface xv

New to this edition

•• Updates throughout the volume include developments, such as
the decline of ISIS after a spectacular rise based on its control
over vast territories in Iraq, and Al Qaeda. The new edition also
discusses and puts into context the latest terrorist tactics—in par-
ticular, the many cases of lethal vehicular terrorism with copy cat
incidents in the United States and Europe.
•• Additions in Chapters 3 and 4 address the increase in violence
carried out by extremist right-wing groups and by left-extremist
parts of the Antifa movement in both the United States and
Europe.
•• The rise of children in Western Europe carrying out terrorist attacks,
suicide missions as family projects, and childhood trauma as a risk
factor are discussed in Chapters 6 and 7.
•• A new section in Chapter 12 addresses human rights violations in
counterterrorism, especially with respect to the killing of civilians
in drone strikes and in the use of torture during the interrogation
of terrorists or alleged terrorists.
•• Most of all, a rewritten Chapter 13 is devoted to the central role
of intelligence and interagency cooperation in efforts to counter
terrorism and protect the homeland.

A successful textbook is a work in progress. While the first editions

of Terrorism and Counterterrorism were well received, comments and
suggestions by instructors and students who used those volumes were
instrumental in extended revisions, additions, and changes for the much
improved second, third, and fourth editions—and now the heavily revised
fifth edition. This edition, too, is not simply an updated version of the
previous one but offers important additions and improvements.
Acknowledgments

The topics introduced and discussed in my seminars on terrorism and

the notes prepared for lecture courses on terrorism and on the media in
American politics informed the organization and the content of this vol-
ume, as did the thoughtful input by my students at Columbia University
and Barnard College during our lively but always civil class discussions.
I am very grateful to the following reviewers for their detailed com-
ments, suggestions, and constructive criticism:

•• Sean K. Anderson, Idaho State University

•• Victor Asal, SUNY Albany
•• Vincent Auger, Western Illinois University
•• Shaheen Ayubi, Rutgers University, Camden
•• Peter A. Barone, University of Bridgeport
•• Jeffrey Bosworth, Mansfield University
•• Tom Brister, Wake Forest University
•• Sabina Burton, University of Wisconsin, Platteville
•• Rachel Bzostek, California State University, Bakersfield
•• Timothy A. Capron, California State University, Sacramento
•• Lamont Colucci, Ripon College
•• Michael V. Deaver, Sierra College
•• Julian Droogan, Macquarie University, Australia
•• Larry Elowitz, Georgia College and State University
•• William Eppright, Columbia College, Orlando
•• John Fielding, Mount Wachusett Community College
•• James L. Freed, University of Maryland University College
•• Hasan Kosebalaban, University of Utah
•• Tobias J. Lanz, University of South Carolina
•• Jecek Lubecki, University of Arkansas, Little Rock
•• C. Augustus Martin, California State University, Dominguez Hills
•• Dennis W. McLean, Keiser University
•• Dean A. Minix, Northern Kentucky University
•• Tricia Mulligan, Iona College
•• Thomas R. O’Connor, North Carolina Wesleyan College
Acknowledgments xvii
•• William Rose, Connecticut College
•• Gabriel Rubin, Montclair State University
•• Stanley E. Spangler, Bentley College
•• George C. Thomas, Marquette University
•• Ronald Vardy, University of Houston
•• Michael Joel Voss, University of Toledo
•• Carlos Yordan, Drew University

For the sixth edition, the following reviewers provided helpful input:

•• Jeffrey Bosworth, Mansfield University

•• Julian Droogan, Macquarie University, Australia
•• Dennis W. McLean, Keiser University
•• Gabriel Rubin, Montclair State University
•• Michael Joel Voss, University of Toledo

The encouragement, guidance, and cooperation I received from Senior

Editor Jennifer Knerr at Routledge made all the work involved in a com-
prehensive book revision as pleasant as possible. Thank you!

The author posts her observations and comments about terrorism,

counterterrorism, the mass media, and current events on her blog,
reflectivepundit (www.reflectivepundit.com). Readers are invited to
visit her blog, comment on posts, or email questions and comments.
About the Author

Brigitte L. Nacos, a longtime U.S. correspondent

for newspapers in Germany, received a Ph.D. in
political science from Columbia University, where
for more than twenty-five years she has taught
and continues to teach courses in American poli-
tics and government. Her research concentrates on
the links between the media, public opinion, and
decision-making; domestic and international ter-
rorism and counterterrorism; and, more recently,
on social movements. Besides publishing many
articles and several book chapters, she is the author
of The Press, Presidents, and Crises (Columbia University Press, 1990);
Terrorism and the Media: From the Iran Hostage Crisis to the World
Trade Center Bombing (Columbia University Press, 1994 and 1996);
Mass-Mediated Terrorism: The Central Role of the Media in Terrorism
and Counterterrorism (Rowman & Littlefield, 2002, 2007, 2016); (with
Oscar Torres-Reyna) Fueling Our Fears: Stereotyping, Media Coverage,
and Public Opinion of Muslim Americans (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006).
She is also the coauthor of From Bonn to Berlin: German Politics in
Transition (Columbia University Press, 1998) with Lewis J. Edinger, and
coeditor of Decisionmaking in a Glass House (Rowman & Littlefield,
2000) with Robert Y. Shapiro and Pierangelo Isernia. Finally, she is
coauthor with Yaeli Bloch-Elkon and Robert Y. Shapiro of Selling Fear:
Counterterrorism, the Media, and Public Opinion (University of Chicago
Press, 2011).
Apart from teaching, researching, and writing, she loves playing golf
and cooking and barbecuing for her family and friends, as well as tending
to her indoor and outdoor flowers.
1 Introduction
The Terrorist Threat

New Year’s Eve in Manhattan’s Times Square. In spite of record cold

temperatures more than 1 million people wait for hours to celebrate the
departure of the old year 2017 and the advent of the New Year 2018.
Finally, as the famous crystal ball drops with a burst of confetti and
fireworks the crowd erupts in deafening shouts of excitement and joy.
Shortly thereafter the celebrants begin to melt away from the famous
venue of this annual media event that is witnessed by many millions
across the country and around the world on TV and computer screens.
What got lost in the worldwide TV crowd were the massive security
resources in terms of manpower, equipment, and expense provided by
the New York City Police Department (NYPD) and its formidable coun-
terterrorism experts. Manhattan’s downtown had suffered three months
earlier, on Halloween Day, a truck-ramming act of terrorism. Now, sand
and garbage trucks blocked all access streets to Times Square. Spectators
had passed several layers of security checks where officers utilized metal
and radiation detection devices. There were also so-called “vapor wake”
dogs trained to sniff out explosives. Rooftop observation teams and snip-
ers looked out for possible attackers. Beat officers had seen training videos
and read bulletins on how to respond to suicide attacks. With well over
5,000 police officers deployed in the heart of New York City the Times
Square area was the most protected piece of real estate in the world.
According to NYPD Commissioner James P. O’Neill there were no
direct threats against the New Year’s Eve celebrations on Times Square.
“Out of an abundance of caution, you’ll see a stronger police presence
out there than we’ve seen even in recent years,” he explained neverthe-
less. Some extra security measures were added because of a seemingly
non-terrorism-related mass shooting in Las Vegas three months earlier,
where the lone gunman sprayed bullets from an upper floor window into
a crowd of concert goers killing forty-nine people and injuring hundreds.
Perhaps the counterterrorism community considered that a terrorist
might try to copycat the Las Vegas massacre.
How serious was the threat of terrorism in New York and elsewhere in
the United States of America at the time? In all of 2017 there had been three
2 Introduction
lethal terrorist attacks in the country with a total of ten fatalities that were
politically motivated and carried out by ideological extremists. The most
deadly incident was the mentioned vehicular attack on October 31, 2017
in New York City by a self-described follower of the Islamic State that
killed eight innocent persons. And there were two terrorist acts by White
Supremacists—one in Charlottesville, Virginia, and another in New York
City, both resulting in the death of one person. It is not clear whether
the shooting and killing of a guard for the Denver Transit Authority
in February 2017 was politically motivated by jihadist extremism.1
The point here is that there were few lethal terrorist attacks in the
United States in all of 2017. Compared to the more than close to 40,000
individuals killed in car accidents and the close to 13,000 dying in gun
homicides every year in the United States the number of annual terror-
ist fatalities is small even in years with major terrorist attacks. Yet, the
threat perception of the American public tends to be far greater with
respect to terrorism than car crashes or gun violence. Equally or more
important is that public officials’ risk assessments tend to be alarm-
ing. Testifying before the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on
Homeland Security in November 2017 the Acting Secretary of Homeland
Security Elaine Duke said: “Today, the magnitude of the threat we face
from terrorism is equal to, and in many ways exceeds, the 9/11 period.”
Nothing could be more disconcerting even more than sixteen years
after the catastrophic attacks of September 11, 2001 than referencing
9/11 in such a grim threat assessment. As one expert notes,

The 9/11 attacks have become what psychologists call an “anchor-

ing event” which, owing to its vivid and dramatic nature, is long
remembered because human memory and perceptions filter out less
dramatic or contradictory information. Moreover, the anchoring
event shapes subsequent analysis and the degree of probability that
are attributed to future events, in this case, the extent and nature of
the terrorist threat.2

The horrific attacks of 9/11 transformed for most Americans and many
people in other Western countries the perception of terrorism from
fictional scenes in disaster movies to images of real-life horror. Never
before had so many people—about 3,000—died in one terrorist opera-
tion. Never before had a terrorist coup inflicted so much grief, so much
devastation, and so much fear of further, and more lethal, attacks. It
was a most painful conclusion to the first World Trade Center bomb-
ing in 1993. The terrorism of the past had turned into something much
more catastrophic, much more threatening—into what has been called
the “new terrorism,” “superterrorism,” or “postmodern terrorism.”
Just as important, never before had one terrorist attack reshaped the
priorities and the actual policy agenda of a victimized state as drastically,
Introduction 3
and impacted international relations as severely, as the assault on tar-
gets in New York and Washington. Not the 9/11 attacks but rather
the U.S. responses to the incident had far-reaching and lasting effects
on the global and domestic realms. This was possible, according to
one scholar, because “the myths of American Exceptionalism and
Barbarism vs. Civilization” shaped the post-9/11 narrative of the ter-
rorist threat and led to a “shared, mythologized understanding of the
significance of 9/11.”3
In response to 9/11, U.S. President George W. Bush, backed by most
members of the U.S. Congress and a vast majority of the American peo-
ple, declared war, not against a conventional enemy, a foreign country,
but rather against a violent activity—a war against terrorism. Less than
four weeks after 9/11, military actions by an American-led, international
coalition commenced in Afghanistan against the assumed masterminds of
the terror on American soil, Osama bin Laden and his close associates in
the Al Qaeda (meaning “the base”) terror organization, and against the
ruling Taliban that had harbored Al Qaeda terrorists and their Afghan
training camps for many years. According to President Bush, Afghanistan
was merely the first battleground in a long and difficult campaign against
a web of terrorist cells and organizations scattered around the globe and
against states actively supporting terrorist activities. Furthermore, the
president, in a speech at West Point on June 1, 2002, and the White
House in a comprehensive follow-up “National Strategy to Combat
Weapons of Mass Destruction,” formulated a new doctrine of preventive
wars that justified preemptive military actions against “emerging threats
before they are fully formed.”4 By citing evidence of existing weapons of
mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq and the threat that the country’s ruler,
Saddam Hussein, might place such weapons into the hands of terrorists,
the Bush administration followed the new doctrine when it decided to
invade the country and force a regime change.5
Even before the dust had settled around the totally destroyed World
Trade Center and the partially demolished Pentagon, people in the United
States and abroad began to recognize that this terrorist assault pushed
the United States and much of the world into a crisis that seemed just
as dangerous as, or perhaps more explosive than, the Cold War conflict
between the Soviet Union and the United States and their respective allies
in the decades following the end of World War II. In some quarters, the
end of the Cold War had fueled expectations of an era of greater inter-
national understanding and cooperation and a “peace dividend” that
would better the economic conditions in the underdeveloped world and
bring improvements in the industrialized nations. But during the 1990s,
such dreams did not come true. Instead, there was a troubling wave of
conflicts in many parts of the world.
Instant commentary in the media compared the events of 9/11 with the
Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor sixty years earlier, claiming that both
4 Introduction
incidents had been as unexpected as bolts of lightning from a blue sky.
Indeed, two months before the kamikaze flights crashed into the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon, a former counterterrorism specialist in the
U.S. Department of State wrote in an op-ed article in the New York Times,

Judging from news reports and the portrayal of villains in our popu-
lar entertainment, Americans are bedeviled by fantasies about ter-
rorism. They seem to believe that terrorism is the greatest threat
to the United States and that it is becoming more widespread and
lethal . . . Nothing of these beliefs are based on facts.6

But others had warned for years that the United States and other
Western countries should brace for catastrophic terrorism that would
result in mass disruption and mass destruction.7 For example, Walter
Laqueur, a leading terrorism expert who had characterized terrorism in
the past as an irritant rather than a major threat, came to a different judg-
ment at the end of the 1990s, when he concluded,

Terrorism has been with us for centuries, and it has always attracted
inordinate attention because of its dramatic character and its sudden,
often wholly unexpected occurrence. It has been a tragedy for the
victims, but seen in historical perspective it seldom has been more
than a nuisance . . . This is no longer true today, and may be even
less so in the future. Yesterday’s nuisance has become one of the
gravest dangers facing mankind.8

Several horrific incidents in the 1990s and certainly the events of 9/11
proved the pessimists right and ended the threat debate. One could argue
that the age of catastrophic terrorism began in December 1988 with the
downing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, caused by a
terrorist bomb that killed a total of 270 civilians on board (most of them
Americans) and on the ground (all of them Scots). This was, at the time,
the single most devastating act of terrorism in terms of the number of
victims. Actually, nearly as many Americans were killed when extremists
of the Lebanese Hezbollah drove an explosive-laden truck into the U.S.
Marine barracks near Beirut Airport in 1983. But while the victims were
deployed as peacekeepers and thus were not combatants in the sense of
fighting a war, they nevertheless were not civilians like the passengers and
crew aboard Pan Am Flight 103 and the people who died on the ground
in Lockerbie. As I will explain in the next chapter, whether civilians or
members of the military are targets and victims figures prominently in
the discussions of what kinds of violent acts constitute terrorism. The
fate of Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988 along with the Oklahoma City bomb-
ing in 1995 that caused the deaths of 168 persons represented turning
points in the lethality of terrorism. Until these events, the widely held
Introduction 5
supposition was that “terrorists want a lot of people watching and a
lot of people listening and not a lot of people dead.”9 But after Pan Am
Flight 103 and the terror in Oklahoma City, this assumption was no
longer valid. Another terrorist incident fueled fears of even more deadly
terrorist strikes and changed intentions on the part of terrorists: In 1995,
members of a Japanese doomsday cult named Aum Shinrikyo (mean-
ing “supreme truth”) released poison gas in the Tokyo subway system,
killing twelve persons and sickening thousands of commuters. As dev-
astating as the consequences were, experts concluded that the release of
the nerve gas sarin could have killed far more people had members of the
Aum cult handled the poison differently. Pointing to the Japanese group’s
ability to develop nerve gas and to acquire toxic materials and know-how
from sources in Australia, the United States, Russia, and elsewhere, U.S.
Senator Sam Nunn concluded that the Japanese case signaled the begin-
ning of “a new era” in terrorism. He warned that WMD could spread
indiscriminately and fall into the hands of terrorists.10
For Americans, the threat of a major bioterrorist catastrophe hit close
to home three weeks after the terror of 9/11, when letters containing
anthrax spores were delivered to several media organizations and mem-
bers of the U.S. Congress. Although in this case “only” five persons died
and a dozen or so fell sick as a result of inhaling the finely powdered
biological agent, an anthrax attack designed to kill as many people as
possible could have easily caused a much more lethal catastrophe. Even
before the anthrax case frightened the American public, New York Times
reporters Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg, and William Broad published
a book in which they called germ weapons “the poor man’s atom bomb”
and warned that

the threat of germ weapons is real and rising, driven by scientific

discoveries and political upheavals around the world. As Aum
Shinrikyo’s failed efforts [to inflict far more harm than planned] sug-
gest, the crucial ingredient in a successful biological attack is not
advanced laboratory equipment or virulent microbes alone, but
knowledge. Such expertise is increasingly available.11

Several months after 9/11, high officials in the U.S. administration

warned that terrorists would inevitably acquire WMD. Testifying before
a Senate committee, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said ter-
rorists “would seek to obtain nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons,
and ultimately would succeed despite U.S. efforts to prevent them [from
doing so].”12 Worse yet, in June 2002 the U.S. government announced
the arrest of Abdullah Al Mujahir, an American citizen who years ear-
lier had been a Chicago street gang member named Jose Padilla. The
Brooklyn-born Muslim convert, who had allegedly trained in Al Qaeda
camps in Afghanistan, was accused of conspiring with fellow terrorists
6 Introduction
to acquire and detonate a so-called dirty bomb in Washington, DC, or
elsewhere in the United States. Although this would not trigger a nuclear
explosion and would not be as lethal as sophisticated nuclear weapons, a
dirty bomb would nevertheless release enough radioactive material over
several city blocks to harm many people and contaminate the affected
area. As it turned out, there was no evidence that Padilla had planned to
get his hands on a dirty bomb but the news of such a threat contributed
to the American people’s worries.
In the following years, there were many dozens of failed and foiled
terrorist plots by jihadists and right-extremists within the United States
but no major attacks. The Fort Hood shooting in 2009, the Boston
Marathon bombing in 2013, the San Bernardino mass shooting in 2015,
the Orlando nightclub mass shooting in 2016, and the deadly New York
City truck ramming in 2017 renewed Americans’ anxieties about the
threat of jihadist terrorism in the homeland although far more terror-
ism occurred abroad without involving Americans. In Europe, hundreds
were killed in jihadi attacks with the most deadly incidents occurring in
Madrid, Spain, in 2004; Breslan, Russia, in 2004; London, U.K., in 2005;
Paris, France, in 2015; Nice, France, in 2016; Manchester, U.K., in 2017;
London, U.K., in 2017. However, tens of thousands of civilians were
killed and maimed in very frequent attacks in the Middle East, South
Asia, and Africa. Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan were particularly hard hit.
By 2006, when the deadly sectarian conflict between Shias and Sunnis
expanded into a civil war, terrorism was the preferred method of attack.
Similarly, terrorist attacks increased in Afghanistan, especially after the
bulk of American and coalition forces were withdrawn. Most of all,
ISIS unleashed a reign of terrorism in both Syria and Iraq starting in
2014. All of these developments supported the notion that terrorism—
and counterterrorism—had entered into a new, most dangerous phase.
But although the faces of terrorists and their brand of violence change
over time, the calculus of terrorism remains basically the same. This ter-
rorist calculus, or scheme, is driven by a set of assumptions:

•• Groups that are too weak to fight nation-states openly in conven-

tional civil or foreign wars will realize some and perhaps all of their
objectives by striking against civilian or noncombatant targets or by
merely threatening to do so.
•• States and governments are ill prepared to react to the type of psy-
chological warfare that terrorists wage against their citizens. While
capable of fighting and winning conventional wars against other
nation-states, the military forces of even the mightiest states are not
suited to fight against elusive enemies who strike at unpredictable
times, places, and targets by equally unpredictable means.
•• Because of their openness and far-reaching civil liberties—especially
press freedom—liberal democracies are far more susceptible to terrorist
Introduction 7
activities and propaganda than authoritarian systems. By striking
seemingly at random, terrorists transmit the false message that eve-
ryone in their target societies is a potential victim.
•• In reaction to serious acts of terror, decision-makers in constitutional
democracies are likely to overreact in efforts to prevent and counter
terrorism, at the expense of their country’s fundamental values and
civil liberties. Such overreactions will motivate citizens in democra-
cies, or at least part of them, to oppose their own governments.

The basic rationale for political violence of this sort guides unsophis-
ticated amateurs and sophisticated professionals, lone wolves and
formidable organizations, the arsonists inspired by the Earth Liberation
Front, and the 9/11 kamikaze terrorists dispatched by Al Qaeda. This
volume describes and analyzes, in the first place, the most important fac-
ets of the terrorist scheme and, second, how the governments of targeted
countries and other institutions (e.g., the news media and international
organizations) react—and how they should react—to actual terrorism
and threats thereof.

Terrorism Trends over the Last Decades

David C. Rapoport concluded that “September 11 marks the most impor-
tant date in the long and bloody history of terrorism. No other terrorist
attack used passenger planes as bombs [and] produced such staggering
casualty figures.”13 But while at the time unparalleled in scope, the terror-
ist assaults of 9/11 came on the heels of more than a quarter century of
consequential international terrorist incidents that targeted Americans,
mostly abroad but also, beginning with the first World Trade Center
bombing in 1993, at home. Although Americans were certainly not the
only victims, the United States was the target of “approximately one
third of all international terrorist attacks over the last 30 years.”14
Apart from their venues, the nationality of the targets, and their
domestic or international nature, individual acts of terrorism have
caused more deaths and injuries in the last several years of the twentieth
and the first years of the twenty-first centuries than in several of the pre-
ceding decades combined. Whereas the number of incidents with respect
to both international and domestic terrorism decreased markedly, the
total number of casualties increased significantly. Thus, as Figure 1.1
shows, in the five-year period from 1988 through 1992, a total of 2,345
international terrorist incidents were recorded that caused 4,325 casual-
ties (persons killed and injured). The number of incidents decreased by
552 during the following five years (1993 through 1997) to 1,793, but
there were 8,767 more casualties, or a total of 13,092 killed or injured
victims. Finally, the next five years (1998 through 2002) witnessed a
further decline of terrorist deeds to a total of 1,649 and yet another jump
8 Introduction
in casualties to a total of 16,807.15 These trend statistics end with the
year 2002 because of a controversy that arose after the initial release of
the numbers for 2003 by the U.S. Department of State. The 2003 num-
bers reflected a rather sharp decline in international terrorist incidents
and casualties, encouraging a State Department official to tell the press,
“You will find in these pages clear evidence that we are prevailing in the
fight [against terrorism].”16 But it turned out that not all relevant inter-
national incidents were counted and that the true numbers in the revised
report represented increases in both casualties and incidents. These and
other problems led to the suspicion that the numbers had been massaged
to support the claim of progress in the war against terrorism. Whereas
the State Department had prepared the “Patterns of Global Terrorism”
report for years, the newly established Terrorist Threat Integration
Center, a creature of the Department of Homeland Security, FBI, and
Department of Defense, was in charge of the 2003 issue.
Up to 2002, then, the statistics showed increases in major terrorist
incidents, or what have been called “terrorist spectaculars,” and a decline
in less dramatic acts of political violence by nonstate actors. In fact, the
tendency toward fewer but more spectacular and more lethal incidents
had already begun during the 1980s. The change coincided with the
growth of what is commonly called “religious terrorism”—the use of
violence for political ends by groups whose motivations and justifications
are couched in religious convictions, terms, and symbols. However, the

Figure 1.1 Trends in International Terrorist Incidents and Casualties

Source: U.S. State Department, “Patterns of Global Terrorism”
Introduction 9
1980s were in this respect only a prelude to the far more pronounced
developments in the post-Cold War era, when religious and pseudor-
eligious terrorism became significantly more prevalent than the secular
variety. The total number of significant incidents of domestic and inter-
national terrorism around the world increased from 74 in the 1970s to
122 in the 1980s and 157 in the 1990s. Here, too, the number of killed
and injured victims jumped from about 2,000 in the 1970s to more than
3,000 in the 1980s and to over 15,000 in the 1990s.17 All of these num-
bers were far surpassed in the first two decades of the new millennium as
Table 1.1 shows.
Following the controversy concerning the 2003 statistics, the National
Counterterrorism Center gathered and analyzed relevant statistics before
the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to
Terrorism (START) began to prepare the statistical annex for the State
Department’s annual “Country Reports on Terrorism.” Since open
sources, most of all news media reports, are the major sources for the
gathering of pertinent information, it is very likely that the actual num-
bers are higher. In a number of countries plagued by high incidents of
terrorism (i.e., Syria, Yemen, or Somalia), there were and are no reli-
able sources. Nevertheless, the reported numbers seem to reflect by and
large the actual trends. That seems also the case concerning the statistics
about countries with most terrorist incidents and victims. As Table 1.2
shows, in 2017—as in previous years—five countries with overwhelm-
ing Muslim majorities (Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia, Syria), one
nation with a population evenly divided between Muslims and Christians
(Nigeria), and another country with a significant Muslim minority (India)
were mostly plagued by terrorism with incidents in Syria most certainly
underreported due to civil war conditions and lack of media access.

Table 1.1 Trends in Terrorist Incidents and Victims

Year Total Attacks People Killed People Injured People Kidnapped

2007 14,415 22,720 44,103 4,980

2008 11,663 15,709 33,901 4,680
2009 10,968 15,311 32,660 10,749
2010 11,641 13,193 30,684 6,051
2011 10,283 12,533 25,903 5,554
2012 6,771 11,098 21,652 1,283
2013 9,707 17,891 32,577 2,990
2014 13,463 32,727 34,791 9,428
2015 11,774 28,328 35,320 12,189
2016 11,072 25,621 33,814 15,543
2017 8,584 18,753 19,461 8,937
Source: U.S. Department of State and START
10 Introduction
Table 1.2 Ten Countries with the Most Terrorist Attacks in 2017

Country Total Total Killed Total Injured Total Kidnapped/

Attacks Taken Hostage

Iraq 1,951 4,269 4,077 1,960

Afghanistan 1,171 4,672 5,023 835
India 860 380 601 224
Pakistan 574 851 1,827 106
Philippines 483 327 298 408
Nigeria 411 1,532 852 245
Somalia 370 1,469 1,093 286
Nepal 247 4 94 10
Egypt 169 655 481 37
Syria 141 1,096 1,055 267
Source: U.S. Department of State and START

As one would expect, acts of international and domestic terrorism

have significant impact on target societies when they are particularly
lethal. But in the past, there were also many incidents that did not result
in large numbers of casualties, or that resulted in none at all, but that
still achieved the status of terrorist spectacular because political leaders
perceived such incidents as acute crises and reacted accordingly. In early
1975, for example, members of the Baader-Meinhof group kidnapped
Peter Lorenz, a Christian Democratic candidate for mayor of West
Berlin. Four days later and after the West German government released
five jailed terrorists and paid $50,000 in ransom, Lorenz was released
unharmed. This was not the first time the authorities in the Federal
Republic of Germany had given in to terrorists’ demands. But, according
to Peter Katzenstein,

two months later the government stood firm when West German
terrorists seized eleven hostages in the West German embassy in
Stockholm. It refused to make any concessions in 1977 when terror-
ists kidnapped and eventually murdered Martin Schleyer, one of the
most prominent business leaders of the Federal Republic.18

The boldness of Lorenz’s kidnapping and the fact that, for the first
time, a politician had been targeted elevated the Lorenz case in the minds
of the West German public and government to the level of a major crisis—
even though no one had been killed or injured. As a result, the West
German authorities altered their response to terrorism, decided to make
no more concessions to terrorists, and stuck to their new policy of
toughness. The kidnapping and murder of former Italian Prime Minister
Introduction 11
Aldo Moro in 1978 by the Red Brigade had a similar effect on the Italian
government and public. In this case, the terrorists killed their immediate vic-
tim (the well-liked Moro) and, during the kidnapping, five of his bodyguards;
the incident was quickly perceived as a major crisis. This was not simply
because of the number of casualties—after all, Europe had witnessed far
more lethal terrorism before the Moro case—but because the Red Brigade
had laid bare the vulnerability and impotence of the Italian authorities
to protect even a former head of government. As Jeffrey Simon observed,
“the subsequent crackdown on the Red Brigade by the Italian police and
security forces was not seen as repressive by the public, but as a welcome
response.”19 In the summer of 2006, when members of the Lebanese
Hezbollah crossed into Israel and abducted two Israeli soldiers, this kid-
napping triggered massive retaliation by Israel and a major military con-
flict between it and Hezbollah.
Over the last several decades, anti-American terrorism incidents have
had significant impact on American decision-makers, U.S. politics and
policies, and, just as importantly, the public at large, regardless of whether
the immediate victims of terrorism survived their ordeal. Thus, although
none of the Americans held as hostages died during the 444 days of the
Iran hostage crisis (1979–1981), this incident had tremendous effect on
Jimmy Carter’s presidency and on U.S. policies and politics during this
period and beyond. By demonstrating that the American superpower—
short of military action—was impotent, a bunch of young Iranians held
the United States hostage, as the media reminded Americans day in and
day out.
We enhance our understanding of many aspects of terrorism in gen-
eral if we know the most pertinent details of those terrorist incidents
with outstanding characteristics and effects. But younger generations do
not know about many incidents of anti-American terrorism abroad that
older Americans remember very well. Younger Americans certainly have
no personal recollection of the Iran hostage crisis or the long ordeal of
American hostages in Lebanon in the 1980s. For this reason, this book’s
appendix (“Major Terrorist Incidents since the Late 1970s”) provides
readers with a number of both extensive and brief summaries of terror-
ist events in two categories: (1) major incidents that targeted Americans
and/or American interests, and (2) major international incidents without
American targets and victims.
Following this introduction, the rest of the book is divided into
three distinct sections: Part I: Terrorism, Part II: Counterterrorism, and
Part III: Terrorism in the News Media and on the Internet. Chapter 2
addresses fundamental definitions and disagreements surrounding the
terms terrorism and terrorist. This includes an often heated debate about
the question: Is terrorism never or sometimes justified? Although in the
past it was rarely as serious a threat as it is today, terrorism in one form
or another has existed in every time and was typically committed by
12 Introduction
groups who were too weak to fight for their causes in open conflicts.
Drawing on the past in the context of terrorism will often illuminate
recent and present developments, events, and issues and can help us to
make comparisons and find similarities and differences. The updated
Chapters 3 and 4 are designed to accomplish this by providing the reader
with a historical and geographic perspective on terrorism in the global
setting—in the past and up to the present time (Chapter 3)—and with
an examination of terrorism in the American setting past and present
(Chapter 4). The third chapter has a new section on new waves of right
and left extremism in the West. In the fourth chapter I added new mate-
rial on the U.S.-based antifascist or Antifa movement. Following the
updated Chapter 5 I added to theories and research results explaining the
making of terrorists using rational choice and childhood trauma expla-
nations. Chapter 7, devoted to women and children in terrorism, offers
an addition about the rise of children and teenagers recruited by ISIS
or similar groups who carried out terrorist strikes. Equally disconcert-
ing is a case of suicide bombings by whole sets of families. The updated
Chapter 8 contains a new section on the growing cases of lethal vehicular
terrorism. Chapter 9 takes a look inside terrorist organizations in terms
of their structure (e.g., the value of leaderless cells and the emergence of
global networks). I updated this chapter and added an interesting listing
of the ten richest terrorist organizations. Chapter 10, the first chapter
of Part II, Counterterrorism, deals with the centrality of counterterror-
ism to America’s post-9/11 national security strategy, the so-called Bush
Doctrine, President Obama’s national security strategy, and in a new
section President Trump’s national security strategy as they relate to ter-
rorism and counterterrorism. Besides, there are other updates covering
the first part of the Trump presidency. Chapter 11 examines hard-power
and soft-power approaches to dealing with and defeating terrorism. As
the post-9/11 years during both the Bush and Obama administrations
showed once again, military superiority rarely defeats terrorist move-
ments or mere groups. The question here then is: What are the prospects
for governments of utilizing both hard power (military and economic)
and soft power (diplomacy and public diplomacy) to weaken and defeat
terrorists? I expanded the discussion of hard and soft powers to include
the Trump administration. The following Chapter (12) on the need for
security and for upholding civil liberties has a new section on human
rights violations in counterterrorism, in particular, in the ongoing drone
war and the post-9/11 “enhanced interrogation” or torture practices.
I rewrote Chapter 13, the last in Part II, so that it now focuses mostly
on the importance of intelligence in the fight against terrorism and the
protection of the homeland. To that end, I took a fresh look at the post-
9/11 reorganization of the counterterrorism community, the newly created
Department of Homeland Security, and the growth of a huge domestic
intelligence machinery. The updated Chapters 14 and 15, making up
Introduction 13
Part III of the volume, remain devoted to “Terrorist Propaganda and the
Mainstream Media” and “Terror and Hate in Cyberspace” with a new
lead-in on the threat of cyberterrorism. I utilized some of the material on
terrorism in the news from what was Chapter 16 in the previous editions
and eliminated the chapter in order to limit the length of the volume.
Finally, the short concluding and updated Chapter 16 discusses the reality
that terrorism is here to stay and raises the question of how societies can
manage to live with the threat of terrorism.

Notes
1 The Anti-Defamation League’s statistics of murders and extremism in the
United States for 2017 lists the killing of thirty-four persons, most of them
the victims of right-wing extremists. It seems, however, that a larger number
of these attacks were crimes and not acts of terrorism. But even the higher
number pales in comparison to other violent causes of death.
2 George C. Fidas, “The Terrorist Threat: Existential or Exaggerated? A
‘Red Cell’ Perspective,” International Journal of Intelligence and Counter
Intelligence 21 (2008): 521.
3 Joanne Esch, “Legitimizing the War on Terror: Political Myth in Official-
Level Rhetoric,” Political Psychology 31:3 (2010): 365.
4 Stated in a letter that accompanied the National Strategy to Combat Weapons
of Mass Destruction (Washington, DC: 2002), ii. For an analysis of the doctrine
of preemptive wars, see Robert Jervis, “Understanding the Bush Doctrine,” in
Demetrios James Caraley, ed., American Hegemony: Preventing War, Iraq,
and Imposing Democracy (New York: Academy of Political Science, 2004),
3–26.
5 In January 2005, the White House announced that the United States had
ended the search for WMD in Iraq without finding any evidence of banned
weapons. The 1,200 specialists of the Iraq Survey Group had spent nearly
two years searching many sites, such as laboratories, factories, and military
installations.
6 Larry C. Johnson, “The Declining Threat of Terrorism,” New York Times,
July 10, 2002, A19.
7 Especially alarming were the scenarios described by Robert Kupperman and
Jeff Kamen, Final Warning: Averting Disaster in the New Age of Terrorism
(New York: Doubleday, 1989).
8 The quote is from Walter Laqueur, The New Terrorism: Fanaticism and the
Arms of Mass Destruction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 3–4.
In an earlier book, Laqueur had called terrorism “a sideshow” in comparison
to far greater problems. See Walter Laqueur, The Age of Terrorism (Boston:
Little, Brown, 1987).
9 Brian Jenkins is quoted in Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1998), 198.
10 Christopher Drew, “Japanese Sect Tried to Buy U.S. Arms Technology, Senator
Says,” New York Times, October 31, 1995.
11 Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg, and William Broad, Germs: Biological
Weapons and America’s Secret War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001),
315–16.
12 According to the Washington Post. See Bill Miller and Christine Haughney,
“Nation Left Jittery by Latest Series of Terror Warnings,” Washington Post,
May 22, 2002, A1.
14 Introduction
13 David C. Rapoport, “The Fourth Wave: September 11 in the History of
Terrorism,” Current History (December 2001): 419.
14 Martha Crenshaw, “Why America? The Globalization of Civil War,” Current
History (December 2001): 424.
15 The incident/casualty numbers were compiled from statistical data pub-
lished by the Department of State in its yearly editions of “Patterns of Global
Terrorism.”
16 Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage was cited by Paul Krugman,
“Errors in Terror,” New York Times, June 25, 2004, A23.
17 The data on major terrorist incidents and the casualties they caused were
compiled using the data of the Centre for Defence and International Security
Studies (CDISS). Because the data for 1999 were not available in the data-
base and were therefore not included in the numbers for the 1990s, the real
increase in major incidents and casualties was still more pronounced. I made
some adjustments to the data compiled by the CDISS. Thus, a few entries
were eliminated because they did not fit the terrorist incident criteria. For
example, in September 1996 raids by the British police were said to have
thwarted an Irish Republican Army bombing campaign in London and netted
weapons and explosives. This incident and similar cases were scratched from
the major incident data. Also, in a few cases the casualty numbers were not
specific enough. When it was said that more than 100 persons were injured,
the most conservative number was assumed—in this case, 100.
18 Peter Katzenstein, “West Germany’s Internal Security Policy: State and
Violence in the 1970s and 1980s,” Western Societies Program, Occasional
Paper no. 28, Center for International Studies (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University,
1990), 31.
19 Jeffrey D. Simon, The Terrorist Trap: America’s Experience with Terrorism
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 322.
Part I

Terrorism
2 The Perennial Debate
What Is Terrorism?

In post-9/11 America it has been common for public officials, the media,
and rank-and-file Americans to associate violence in public places car-
ried out by Muslim attackers as acts of terrorism but the same types of
violence by non-Muslims as crimes or hate crimes. Thus, in 2017, the
most deadly attack was carried out by a self-described jihadist who killed
eight persons in a truck-ramming incident in New York City. Rightly
so, this was immediately called terrorism. The perpetrator himself left
no doubt that his motives were political. But after a White Supremacist
stabbed a randomly selected African American man to death in New
York City and admitted to having planned to kill many more blacks,
this was reported and prosecuted as murder and “hate crime.” Similarly,
after a left-extremist man, angry about Donald Trump’s presidency,
sought out Republican members of the U.S. Congress on a baseball field
near the capital for a mass shooting that injured five persons, this, too,
was reported and treated as crime—not terrorism.
There was, however, one notable moment in 2017 that seemed to sig-
nal a possible correction of the uneven usage of the term terrorism: Two
days after a deadly car attack by a White Supremacist in Charlottesville,
Virginia, that killed a young woman, Attorney-General Jeff Sessions
declared that the “unequivocally unacceptable and evil attack” did
indeed meet “the definition of domestic terrorism.”1 While the head-
line “Was the Charlottesville Car Attack Domestic Terrorism, a Hate
Crime or Both?” in the Washington Post asked the right questions and
the article underneath reported the Attorney-General’s conclusion in this
particular case, legal experts cited in the same article did not even try to
clarify what distinguishes terrorism from ordinary crime.
The uneven usage of the term terrorism pre-dates the post-9/11 era. In
2001, before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon,
the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) list of the “Ten Most Wanted
Fugitives” included three men sought for their involvement in acts of
political violence: Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of lethal attacks
on the American battleship USS Cole in the fall of 2000 and on the
American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania two years earlier; Eric Robert
18 Terrorism
Rudolph, who was sought for the deadly bombing of an abortion clinic in
Alabama, the fatal explosion in Atlanta during the 1996 Olympic Games,
and similar attacks on other facilities; and James Charles Kopp, who
was charged with the assassination of Dr. Barnett Slepian, a provider
of legal abortions. At the time, bin Laden was called a “terrorist” in the
United States—by U.S. government officials, the media, and the public.
However, with the exception of activists in the pro-choice movement,
hardly anyone characterized Rudolph and Kopp publicly as “terrorists”;
each was described as a “criminal,” “murderer,” or “extremist.” After
Slepian’s violent death, President Bill Clinton said, “I am outraged by the
murder of Dr. Barnett Slepian in his home last night in Amherst, NY.”2
Yet, neither Kopp nor Rudolph was an ordinary murderer. Both were
antiabortion extremists who killed in the name of an elusive “Army of
God” and single-issue politics as pursued by the most violent wing in the
pro-life movement. Just like bin Laden, they acted to publicize, drama-
tize, and further their political and religiously motivated and justified
political and social agenda. Why, then, did public officials, the media,
and Americans in general choose different terms to explain the same types
of deeds and the same types of perpetrators?
At first sight, one might guess that the severity of an act of violence,
the damage inflicted, and especially the number of victims influence the
language that describes the deeds and their perpetrators. After all, even
before the attacks of 9/11, bin Laden and his associates had caused the
deaths of hundreds of innocent victims, whereas Kopp had shot “just”
one person and Rudolph had killed two people while injuring more
than 100 others. But the number of killed and injured victims does not
determine whether an act of political violence is labeled “terrorism” or
“crime.” To this day, for example, the Iran hostage crisis (1979–1981)
is widely perceived as a major terrorist incident, although none of the
forty-nine Americans who were held for 444 days in the U.S. embassy in
Tehran was physically harmed, nor were the three U.S. embassy officials
who were stuck in Iran’s foreign ministry. The Lebanese men who in
1985 hijacked a TWA airliner en route from Athens to Rome, brutally
killed a young U.S. Navy diver, and held other passengers hostage were
also considered “terrorists” in the United States.
One plausible explanation is the likelihood that government officials
and reporters are more inclined to call political violence “terrorism”
when it is committed abroad and “crime” when perpetrated at home.
But this speculation does not solve the definitional puzzle either, as
a review of pertinent domestic cases reveals. Timothy McVeigh, the
man responsible for the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and the death
of 168 innocent people, was considered a terrorist and still is.3 In the
past, the FBI and news organizations described homegrown arson-
ists from the radical environmental groups Earth Liberation Front
and Animal Liberation Front as “terrorists” and their deeds as “ter-
rorism,” although the perpetrators did not kill or injure people but
The Perennial Debate 19
were content to damage buildings and research projects. Similarly,
Europeans have been more inclined to characterize political violence as
terrorism when it is committed in their own country or in their neigh-
borhood. In the past, the German government and media, for example,
tended to call politically motivated violence Terrorismus (terrorism)
when it was committed by indigenous groups, such as the Red Army
Faction and its successor groups and cells, or by organizations in other
Western European countries, such as the Basque separatist organiza-
tion Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) in Spain. But the same officials and
media organizations characterized the Abu Sayyaf separatists in the dis-
tant Philippines as militante Moslemrebellen (militant Muslim rebels),
Rebellengruppe (a rebel group), or Separatisten (separatists)—even at a
time when the Filipino group held three Germans hostage. Public offi-
cials, the news media, and the public in England called acts of violence
by the Irish Republican Army and by splinter groups thereof terrorism
but avoided the controversial “T”-word when reporting on politically
motivated violence abroad. However, the attacks on the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon, although occurring on another continent,
were condemned as terrorism in these and other European countries in
the days and weeks after 9/11.
All of this begs one conclusion: When public officials, the news media,
and experts in the growing field of terrorism studies (what one observer
has called “terrorology”) make definitional choices, the severity and the
venues of violent deeds are not unequivocal guides.4 Nor is the national-
ity of the victims. While research has shown that the U.S. media have
been more inclined to characterize political violence as terrorism when it
is committed against Americans rather than against other nationals, this
has not been a consistent determinant either.5 The ambiguity about what
constitutes terrorism—and what does not—deserves attention because
the choice of language determines, or at least influences, how politically
motivated violence is perceived inside and outside a targeted society: If
violent acts for political ends are described as criminal activity, the perpe-
trators are readily seen as social misfits and compared to other dangerous
criminals that every society must deal with; if, however, political violence
is labeled “terrorism,” the perpetrators are easily perceived as threats to
the political, social, and/or economic fabric of the societies they terrorize.
In the first case, the problem is simply seen as one of the criminal justice
system; in the second case, it is more likely to be seen in the larger context
of national security. As one leading terrorism scholar observed,

It is clear from surveying the literature of terrorism, as well as the

public debate, that what one calls things matters. There are few
neutral terms in politics, because political language affects the per-
ceptions of protagonists and audiences, and such effect acquires a
greater urgency in the drama of terrorism. Similarly, the meanings of
the terms change to fit a changing context.6
20 Terrorism
Even when there is agreement that the perpetrators of violence are not
ordinary criminals but are politically motivated, the definitional ambigui-
ties remain. The greatest difficulty is rooted in the tendency of different
people to perceive one and the same act as either a despicable or a justifi-
able means to political ends, as either an evil deed carried out by terrorists
or a courageous act committed by warriors or revolutionaries in pursuit
of just causes. The slogan that “one person’s terrorist is another person’s
freedom fighter” captures these contrasting value judgments. There is
no doubt that the terms terrorism and terrorist(s) have negative conno-
tations. As one terrorism expert recognized, “to call an act of political
violence terrorist is not merely to describe it but to judge it,” because
“nobody wants to be called a terrorist; terrorism is what the other side
is up to.”7 There were exceptions along the way. After the Russian revo-
lutionary Vera Zasulich shot and wounded the dictatorial governor of
St. Petersburg Fydor Trepov in 1878 she dropped her gun instead of
using it to avoid her arrest. “I am a terrorist not a murderer,” is how she
explained her actions. However, as James Forest concluded, the Zasulich
case “represents one of relatively few examples in which the term ‘terrorist’
was embraced by the perpetrators of the violence.”8
Before he was sentenced to 240 years in prison, Ramzi Yousef, the
mastermind of the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, stood in a
New York courtroom and declared defiantly, “Yes, I am a terrorist, and
I’m proud of it.”9 Anarchists in the second half of the nineteenth century
did not reject the “T”-word either. On the contrary, some of them called
themselves terrorists and their violence terrorism. However, a Jewish ter-
rorist group that was active in the 1940s and known as the Stern Gang
is believed to be among the last of such groups to describe themselves as
a terrorist organization.10 Most contemporary perpetrators of political
violence reject the “T”-word. In the mid-1990s, when members of the
Peruvian Tupac Amaru group occupied the Japanese embassy in Lima
and held scores of people hostage, the then Peruvian president Alberto
Fujimori repeatedly called the hostage-holders terrorists and their actions
terrorism, while the captors inside the embassy insisted that they were
commandos of a revolutionary movement and that their violent takeover
was a military occupation. Like the Tupac Amaru leaders, most contem-
porary perpetrators of political violence understand well that the choice
of words and the invocation of metaphors affect how friends and foes
perceive them and their actions.

The Meaning of Terrorism over Time

The usage of the term terrorism has changed a great deal over time. In its
original definition in the eighteenth century, it described violent actions
by those in control of a state or, in other words, political violence “from
above,” as exercised during the Reign of Terror in the wake of the French
The Perennial Debate 21
Revolution, when terrorism meant the mass guillotining of the aristocracy
and other real or perceived enemies of the state. During the nineteenth
century, the meaning of terrorism expanded to include violence against
those in power from those not in control of a state or government, and
thus stood also for violence “from below,” such as the assassinations of
leaders and other politicians.11 By the end of the century, mostly because
of bombings and assassinations by anarchists, terrorism was predomi-
nantly associated with antistate, antigovernment violence. In the twentieth
century, terrorism even more so came to mean political violence “from
below” both in domestic and in international settings. This latest shift
in the definitional evolvement worked in favor of governments in that
officials were quite successful in rejecting the terrorist label for their gov-
ernment’s or friendly countries’ violent actions.
Even when applied to political violence committed by groups, not all
nonstate actors are treated equally in this respect either; rather, small
groups are more often called terrorists than large groups, and the latter
are more frequently identified as guerrillas or revolutionaries. According
to Richard E. Rubenstein,

Descriptively “terrorism” suggests violent action by individuals or

small groups. Judgmentally, it implies illegitimacy. These meanings
are closely related, since there are very few situations in which assas-
sinations, bombings, kidnappings, or bank robberies seem justified.
By contrast, wars and revolutions are frequently considered not only
justified but holy.12

Similarly, Martha Crenshaw has argued,

Terrorism is not mass or collective violence but rather the direct

activity of small groups, however authentically popular these groups
may be: even if supported by a larger organization or political party,
the number of active militants who engage in terrorism is small.13

Precisely because an act of political violence is more likely to be seen as

illegitimate, as an act of terrorism, when carried out by individuals or
small factions, most groups, regardless of their true size, describe them-
selves as large organizations with significant popular support; they also
invoke metaphors of war, revolution, and liberation. These linguistic tac-
tics are reflected in the names they choose for themselves, as the follow-
ing examples demonstrate: Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, Irish
Republican Army, Red Army Brigade, Red Army Faction, Armed Islamic
Group, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia. Members of such organizations call them-
selves and want to be perceived as commandos, fighters, soldiers, war-
riors, guerrillas, or revolutionaries.
22 Terrorism
The case of Richard C. Reid, a self-proclaimed disciple of Osama bin
Laden and member of the Al Qaeda organization, was a case in point.
Sentenced to life for his attempt to blow up an American airliner with
explosives hidden in his shoes, the would-be shoe bomber told Judge
William G. Young of the Federal District Court in Boston, “I am at war
with your country.” But the judge rejected vehemently the assertion that
Reid was a soldier, telling him, “You are not an enemy combatant, you
are a terrorist. You are not a soldier in any army, you are a terrorist.”14

The Definitional Potpourri

Government officials are in a more advantageous position than other
political actors to confer the “T”-word on groups or withhold it and
thereby affect public perceptions, because most of the time the mass
media cover officialdom far more frequently than other sources. Indeed,
this is true not simply in authoritarian systems where the government con-
trols the media but also in liberal democracies.15 It has been argued that
during the Cold War era, government officials, terrorism experts, and
the news media in the West, especially in the United States, denounced
violent left-wing groups and movements inside and outside the United
States as terrorists because these organizations were hostile to the eco-
nomic and political arrangement in Western liberal democracies, and
that the same Western establishment supported equally or more violent
right-wing perpetrators of political violence as freedom fighters because
of their anticommunist pedigree.16 But to whatever degree this criticism
was valid, these lines of demarcation faded away once the Cold War was
over. In a 2002 review of domestic terrorism, for example, the FBI stated,

During the past decade we have witnessed dramatic changes in the

nature of the terrorist threat. In the 1990s, right-wing extremism
overtook left-wing terrorism as the most dangerous domestic threat
to the country.17

Contrary to the suggestion that “individual governments have been

swift to ratify their own definitions” of terrorism and that the continu-
ing “definitional haze” remains simply a dilemma for the international
community, individual governments have not solved this definitional
problem either; if they managed to streamline their terminology, they did
not apply their own definitions in consistent ways.18 The United States
was, for a long time, a case in point in that the executive departments
and agencies of the federal government did not adopt a standard defini-
tion. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), for example,
defined terrorism as violence “for purposes of intimidation, coercion, or
ransom” without including the provision that it must be politically moti-
vated; this definition covered many ordinary crimes.19 It was only in the
The Perennial Debate 23
aftermath of 9/11, when the press reported and a congressional commit-
tee complained about the lack of a uniform definition within the govern-
ment, that FEMA adopted the general definition of terrorism that was
used by the FBI, namely, that terrorism is the “unlawful use of force or
violence against persons and property to intimidate or coerce a govern-
ment, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of
political or social objectives.”20
As the law enforcement agency that is charged with preventing ter-
rorism and with investigating terrorist incidents once they occur, the FBI
developed the following working definitions that distinguish between
domestic and international terrorism and, not surprisingly, focus heavily
on the unlawful nature of terrorism and the violation of criminal laws by
the perpetrators of political violence:

•• Domestic terrorism is the unlawful use, or threatened use, of violence

by a group or individual based and operating entirely within the
United States or its territories, without foreign direction, committed
against persons or property, to intimidate or coerce a government,
the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of
political or social objectives.
•• International terrorism involves violent acts dangerous to human life
that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or any
state, or that would be a criminal violation if committed within the
jurisdiction of the United States or any state. Acts of international
terrorism are intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population,
influence the policy of the government, or affect the conduct of a
government. These acts transcend national boundaries in terms of
the means by which they are accomplished, the persons they are
intended to intimidate, or the locale in which perpetrators operate.21

The Department of State, with jurisdictions in the area of international

terrorism but not in the domestic realm, adopted a terminology that
was closest to an official U.S. government definition because it was con-
tained in Title 22 of the United States Code, Section 2656f(d), a federal
statute, which requires the State Department to provide Congress with
annual reports on terrorist groups and countries that sponsor terrorism.
According to this statute’s and the Department of State’s definitions,

•• “Terrorism” means premeditated, politically motivated violence

perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or
clandestine agents, and is usually intended to influence an audience.
•• “International terrorism” means terrorism involving citizens or the
territory of more than one country.
•• “Terrorist group” means any group practicing, or that has significant
subgroups that practice, international terrorism.
24 Terrorism
This definition and particularly its first part delineate not only the most
important, but also the most contested, attributes assigned to terrorism.
First, the motives are political. Unlike the term crime, which implies
that perpetrators act for personal gain and satisfaction, material and
otherwise, terrorism is understood as politically motivated. There is no
disagreement on this characteristic regardless of whether the perpetra-
tors are guided by secular or religious beliefs. However, while it is not
difficult to differentiate between criminal and political motivations most
of the time, sometimes the lines are blurred—especially during ongoing
incidents. In the fall of 2002, for example, when a pair of snipers terror-
ized millions of people in Washington, DC and the surrounding areas of
Virginia and Maryland for twenty-one long days, killing ten and seriously
injuring three persons, law enforcement specialists had no clue about the
nature of these attacks, that is, whether they were criminal or terrorist
acts. Even in the face of threats that the random killings would continue
unless a large sum of money was paid, nobody was sure whether the
crime-or-terrorism mystery was completely solved. In the past, politically
motivated groups frequently committed violent crimes, such as attacks
on armored cars, bank robberies, and kidnappings for ransom, in order
to support themselves and their terror operations. As for the Washington
snipers, even after their arrest, it was not clear whether their motives were
purely criminal or were influenced by political grievances as well. After all,
as terrorism expert Jessica Stern pointed out, one of the pair, John Allen
Muhammad, “reportedly told a friend that he endorsed the September 11
attacks and disapproved of U.S. policy toward Muslim states.”22
Second, the targets are civilians or noncombatants. In declared or
undeclared wars and other military conflicts, the warring sides target
members of each other’s armed forces; terrorists intentionally and ran-
domly target civilians and what one might call innocent bystanders.
However, terrorists are also known to single out the citizens of one or
more countries or the members of particular religious, racial, or ethnic
groups. In the 1970s and 1980s, for example, some Palestinian groups
and the Lebanese-based Hezbollah (or Party of God) targeted U.S. citi-
zens and especially Jewish Americans. Terrorists would typically force
the passengers of a hijacked plane to surrender their passports to iden-
tify Americans and, based on their names, single out those who they
believed to be Jews. Domestic terrorists as well have targeted innocent
bystanders randomly but sought out members of particular groups. Over
the July Fourth weekend of 1999, for example, a young adherent of the
White Supremacy hate group World Church of the Creator went on a
killing spree in Illinois and Indiana that left an African American basket-
ball coach and a Korean graduate student dead and six orthodox Jews
injured. There was no doubt Benjamin Nathaniel Smith, the perpetrator,
encountered the victims by chance but shot them because he could iden-
tify them as black, Asian, and Jewish.
The Perennial Debate 25

For Jihadis All Americans and/or All Westerners

Are Combatants

In May 2010, after a series of foiled and a few successful terrorist

incidents inside the United States that involved homegrown or immi-
grated Muslim plotters, the Yemeni-American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki
rejected the distinction between combatants and civilians. In an inter-
view with Al Jazeera, he justified the targeting of civilians along the
lines of Osama bin Laden’s often expressed position. While Awlaki,
who was killed in a U.S. drone strike, spoke in the following excerpts
about American targets, the Islamic State expanded his justification
of “legitimate” targets to both military and civilian infidels throughout
the West.

INTERVIEWER: Do you support such operations [like the foiled

Christmas Day bombing] even though they target what the media
calls “innocent civilians”?
ANWAR AL-AWLAKI: Yes. With regard to the issue of “civilians,” this term
has become prevalent these days, but I prefer to use the terms
employed by our jurisprudents. They classify people as either
combatants or noncombatants. A combatant is someone who
bears arms—even if this is a woman. Noncombatants are people
who do not take part in the war. The American people in its entirety
takes part in the war, because they elected this administration,
and they finance this war. In the recent elections, and in the previ-
ous ones, the American people had other options, and could have
elected people who did not want war. Nevertheless, these can-
didates got nothing but a handful of votes. We should examine
this issue from the perspective of Islamic law, and this settles the
issue—is it permitted or forbidden? If the heroic mujahid brother
Umar Farouk could have targeted hundreds of soldiers, that would
have been wonderful. But we are talking about the realities of war.

For 50 years, an entire people—the Muslims in Palestine—has been

strangled, with American aid, support, and weapons. Twenty years
of siege and then occupation of Iraq, and now, the occupation of
Afghanistan. After all this, no one should even ask us about target-
ing a bunch of Americans who would have been killed in an airplane.
Our unsettled account with America includes, at the very least, one
(continued)
26 Terrorism

(continued)
million women and children. I’m not even talking about the men. Our
unsettled account with America, in women and children alone, has
exceeded one million. Those who would have been killed in the plane
are a drop in the ocean.23

ISIS: Kill Any Disbeliever

If you can kill a disbelieving American or European—especially the
spiteful and filthy French—or an Australian, or a Canadian, or any
other disbeliever from the disbelievers waging war, including the citi-
zens of the countries that entered into a coalition against the Islamic
State, then rely upon Allah, and kill him in any manner or way however
it may be. Do not ask for anyone’s advice and do not seek anyone’s
verdict. Kill the disbeliever whether he is civilian or military, for they
have the same ruling.
Will you leave the disbeliever to sleep safely at home while the
Muslim women and children shiver with fear of the roars of the cru-
sader airplanes above their heads day and night? How can you enjoy
life and sleep while not aiding your brothers, not casting fear into the
hearts of the cross worshippers, and not responding to their strikes
with multitudes more?
So O muwahhid wherever you may be, hinder those who want to
harm your brothers and state as much as you can. The best thing you
can do is to strive to your best and kill any disbeliever, whether he be
French, American, or from any of their allies.24

It is noteworthy that the most authoritative definition used by the U.S.

government does not characterize the deliberate targets of terrorism as
“civilian” but as “noncombatant” and thus puts civilians, government
officials, and military personnel into the same category of targets and
victims as long as public officials and members of the armed forces are
not engaged in combat. If one embraces the “noncombatant” definition,
the Iranian hostage crisis (1979–1981) was a terrorist incident because
the American captives, although members of the U.S. embassy staff, were
not involved in an armed conflict. The U.S. Marines in the embassy com-
pound were there to protect the embassy. Similarly, the 2001 attack on
the USS Cole in the Yemeni port of Aden during a refueling stop that
resulted in the death of seventeen crew members would qualify as an act
The Perennial Debate 27
of terrorism, as was a truck bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks outside
Beirut in 1983 that killed 241 Americans. If one subscribes to the “civil-
ian” definition, these three incidents do not qualify as terrorism. In the
Beirut case, the supporters of the lethal truck bombing and some Muslim
clerics justified the so-called suicide bombing by rejecting the “noncom-
batant” definition; instead, they explicitly called the targets and victims
of the attack members of a hostile military. The U.S. Marines had been
dispatched to Lebanon as peacekeepers, but they did get involved in the
country’s civil strife.25 In the case of the strike against the USS Cole and
other Al Qaeda-related incidents, bin Laden and his associates did not
even bother to justify these terrorist acts as directed against U.S. military
personnel. After all, several years earlier, bin Laden had called on all
Muslims to kill Americans everywhere—civilians and members of the
armed forces.
Third, the perpetrators are nonstate actors. Neither the Department
of State’s nor the FBI’s definitions leave doubt that, in their understand-
ing, political violence is terrorism only when carried out by groups,
subgroups (State Department definition), or individuals (FBI definition)
who intentionally target noncombatants. Unlike some scholars, among
them Crenshaw and Rubenstein, U.S. government agencies and depart-
ments do not distinguish between small and large groups, but the FBI’s
definition does include political violence by individuals without the
requirement that they be members of or directed by a group. Conversely,
Bruce Hoffman seems to exclude politically motivated violence by lone
wolves when he states that “terrorism is conducted by an organization
with an identifiable chain of command or conspiratorial cell structure.”26
Following this definitional element, one would not categorize individu-
als such as the Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh or Benjamin
Smith, the White Supremacist mentioned earlier, as terrorists. This book
reflects the view that one individual or several persons can commit ter-
rorist acts if they have political motives and goals—regardless of whether
they are members of a group. McVeigh, for example, was not a formal
member of one of the organizations in the right-wing, antigovernment
movement, but he moved in these circles and was familiar with and
embraced the extremist ideas and grievances common in this milieu.
More importantly, because they do not include governments or states
and their agents as possible perpetrators of terrorism, the United States
and other parties have been accused of applying a double standard. Thus,
Edward Herman and Gerry O’Sullivan explained these definitional
choices with the ideological Cold War biases of Western governments,
Western terrorism experts, and the Western media, accusing them of
looking upon the West as the sole victim of terrorist activities. They
argued in particular that “the Western establishment has defined terror-
ism so as to exclude governments, which allows it to attend closely to
the Baader-Meinhof gang and the Red Brigades and to play down the
28 Terrorism
more severely intimidating actions of governments that they support.”27
Actually, the long-standing definition of the U.S. Department of Defense
was in this respect more useful to critics, who insisted all along on the
inclusion of states or governments in any explanation of terrorism.
The Defense Department’s terminology was broader than the definitions
embraced by the FBI and the U.S. Department of State, and not explicit
as to the characteristics of the perpetrators of terrorism. For the Defense
Department, terrorism meant

the unlawful use of—or threatened use of—force or violence against

individuals or property to coerce or intimidate governments or socie-
ties, often to achieve political, ideological, or religious objectives.28

However, the FBI’s and the U.S. Department of State’s more specific ver-
sions that single out nonstate actors as the perpetrators of terrorism, not
the Department of Defense’s less specific definition, have been the pre-
ferred models for other executive agencies in the U.S. administration.
There is no disagreement on one important point: Terrorism is com-
mitted in order to intimidate and terrorize a target audience. Therefore,
the target society is far more important in the terrorist calculus than the
immediate victims, in that terrorists are after a targeted public’s and gov-
ernment’s psychological mindsets in order “to make them act in a way
which the attackers desire.”29 Michael Stohl has explained terrorism as
a three-step process that consists of the “act or threat of violence, the
emotional reaction to such an act or threat, and the social effects result-
ant from the acts and reaction.”30 With this process model in mind, Stohl
concluded that “terrorists are primarily interested in the audience and
not the victims” and that the “act or threat of violence is but the first step
[in the three-part process].”31
Obviously aware of the definitional difficulties, the European
Convention to Combat Terrorism that was adopted in 1977 by the
member states of the European Union did not contain a definition of
terrorism and listed instead a number of crimes that made perpetrators
of such criminal acts liable to be extradited from one European country
to another. Agreement on the definition of terrorism was never achieved
in the larger setting of the United Nations (UN), although there were
many efforts to embrace a single definition as the precondition for a
truly international convention to have all member states agree to con-
demn and fight terrorism. The efforts to agree on one understanding of
terrorism began between World War I and World War II and continued
throughout the rest of the twentieth and into the twenty-first centuries.
In 1937, the League of Nations Convention made the first attempt to
embrace an internationally accepted definition of terrorism that would
allow the unconditional condemnation of terrorism. This first effort
identified as terrorism
The Perennial Debate 29
all criminal acts directed against a state and intended or calculated to
create a state of terror in the minds of particular persons or a group
of persons or the general public.32

Sixty-two years later, in 1999, a resolution of the UN General Assembly

suggested that

criminal acts intended or calculated to provoke a state of terror in the

general public, a group of persons, or particular persons for political
purposes are in any circumstance unjustifiable, whatever the consid-
erations of a political, philosophical, racial, ethnic, religious or other
nature that may be invoked to justify them.33

But the member states of the UN have not agreed to this or any other pro-
posal and have adopted instead a dozen conventions and protocols over
the last several decades that prohibit specific acts of terrorism, such as
hijacking, hostage-taking, attacks on diplomats, and nuclear terror. Even
after the events of September 11, 2001, renewed efforts to agree on a def-
inition of terrorism and adopt a comprehensive agreement to combat this
kind of violence failed. While the United States, the European Union, and
many other countries agreed to focus on the victims of terrorism and con-
demn the targeting of civilians, a bloc of nations led by the Organization
of the Islamic Conference insisted on the exclusion of national libera-
tion movements and resistance to foreign occupation.34 In 2002, Islamic
nations adopted an agreement that obliged them to support a definition
of terrorism that made a distinction between terrorism and legitimate
struggle against foreign occupation. The delegates declared specifically,
“We reject any attempt to link terrorism to the struggle of the Palestinian
people in their exercise of their inalienable right to establish their inde-
pendent state.”35
Given these difficulties, one prominent terrorism expert, Walter
Laqueur, has suggested that it is even less likely now than it was in the
past to formulate and agree upon one definition, and that therefore new
approaches are needed to solve the increasingly more complex problem.
According to Laqueur,

Today there are more varieties [of political violence] than existed
thirty years ago, and many are so different from those of the past and
from each other that the term terrorism no longer fits some of them.
In the future, new terms will probably be found for the new varieties
of terrorism.36

In the search for a value-free definition of the term terrorism, it has

been suggested that the focus must be on the acts of political violence
and not on the motives and justifications of those who commit them.
30 Terrorism
Terrorism expert Brian Jenkins, for example, has proposed that politi-
cal violence needs to be defined “by the nature of the act, not by the
identity of the perpetrators or the nature of their cause.”37 Many news
organizations have made this choice in that they use the term terror-
ism sparingly or forget about it altogether. Instead, they describe the
methods of violence as bombing, hijacking, kidnapping, and so on, and
the perpetrators as bombers, hijackers, hostage-takers, and the like. The
news media are particularly influential in shaping the public’s percep-
tion of what political violence qualifies as terrorism. A content analy-
sis of leading American newspapers found that stories about political
violence contained the terms hijacker(s), gunman(men), and guerrilla(s)
far more often than terrorist(s) and refrained from characterizing the
acts as terrorism but described them rather as hijackings, killings, bomb-
ings, explosions, attacks, blasts, shootings, seizures, and so on.38 Just
as revealing was the study’s finding that more than 94 percent of these
characterizations were chosen by the media in headlines and journalistic
descriptions, compared to less than 6 percent that were attributed to the
way that government officials, witnesses, and other sources defined acts
of political violence.
Following the events of 9/11, some news organizations came under
attack for avoiding the term terrorism in reporting about the strikes
against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The news agency
Reuters in particular prohibited its reporters and editors from using the
“T”-word even in the context of 9/11 because, as members of the man-
agement explained in memos to the staff and in interviews,

We all know that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom

fighter and that Reuters upholds the principle that we do not use the
word terrorist.
We’re trying to treat everyone on a level playing field, however tragic
it’s been and however awful and cataclysmic for the American people.39

As it turned out, the news agency’s decision was not simply motivated by
the determination to appear even handed but by practical considerations
as well. One of the organization’s news executives explained, “We don’t
want to jeopardize the safety of our staff . . . in Gaza, the West Bank, and
Afghanistan.”40
Other news organizations were accused of applying a double standard
in deciding when to use and not to use the “T”-word. The Star Tribune
in Minneapolis, for example, defended its practice of avoiding the term
terrorism in reports about the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and explained
that this was decided “because of the emotional and heated nature of
the dispute.” The newspaper stated furthermore, “In the case of the term
‘terrorist,’ other words—‘gunman,’ ‘separatist,’ and ‘rebel,’ for example—
may be more precise and less likely to be viewed as judgmental. Because
The Perennial Debate 31
of that we often prefer these more specific words.” However, after 9/11
the Star Tribune did describe Al Qaeda as a terrorist network, explaining
that the term is permitted in some circumstances. In the case of Al Qaeda,
the exception was made because, as the newspaper’s assistant managing
editor explained, the network had been identified by the U.S. government
and other countries as a terrorist organization; furthermore, the argument
was that some of its members had been convicted as terrorists.41
More than two years after 9/11, Washington Post ombudsman Michael
Getler defended the newspaper’s choices with respect to the language of
terrorism in response to readers’ complaints about bias in the Post’s cov-
erage of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Getler argued, “Terrorism and
terrorist can be useful words, but they are labels. Like all labels, they do
not convey much hard information. We should rely first on specific facts,
not characterization.”42 He also explained what the Post considered dif-
ferences between different organizations according to their activities and
goals as he rejected attempts to equate the “U.S. battle against Al Qaeda
with the Israeli battle against Hamas.”43 As Getler put it,

Hamas conducts terrorism but also has territorial ambitions, is a nation-

alist movement and conducts some social work. As far as we know, Al
Qaeda exists only as a terrorist network. It is composed of radicals
from several Islamic countries. The Palestinian resistance is indigenous.
Al Qaeda launched a devastating surprise attack on the United States.
Israelis and Palestinians have been at war for a long time. Palestinians
have been resisting a substantial and, to Palestinians, humiliating,
Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza since they were seized in
the 1967 war. That resistance has now bred suicide bombers.44

Of the four letters to the editor that the Post published in response to
Getler’s op-ed piece, three were critical and one was supportive of Getler’s
position, a fact that underlined the vast disagreements in this debate. Most
Western news organizations avoided the “T”-word and called nonstate
actors that deliberately commit violence against civilians “militants” or
“militant groups” or the like and characterized their actions according to
the methods used—bombing, rocket attack, kidnapping. But even this did
not satisfy all critics who wanted a distinction between organizations that
besides perpetrating terrorist acts have other, even legitimate, roles and
those exclusively involved in violence. In the midst of the Israeli–Hamas
confrontation of late 2008 and early 2009, one critic wrote:

At present, American papers’ reflexive use of the words “militant

organization,” or some variation thereof, closely mirrors the U.S.
government’s political stance on Hamas, which is that it’s a “terror-
ist organization.” But the phraseology is simply too stark, given the
complexity of forces at play in this decades-old conflict.45
32 Terrorism
Downplaying and Emphasizing the “T”-Word
In an interview with the German newsweekly Der Spiegel, U.S. Secretary
of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano said that avoiding the term ter-
rorism in her first appearance before Congress did not mean the absence
of a terrorist threat. Rather, she explained,

“although I did not use the word ‘terrorism,’ I referred to ‘man-

caused’ disasters. That is perhaps only a nuance, but it demonstrates
that we want to move away from the politics of fear toward a policy
of being prepared for all risks that can occur.”46

The term man-made disaster did not sit well with critics of the administra-
tion who noted that President Barack Obama and other administration
officials, too, avoided the term terrorism and rather spoke of violent
extremism and instead of terrorists about violent extremists. Contrary
to the Bush administration, they also spoke rarely about the “war on
terrorism” or the “global war against terrorism.” Former Vice President
Richard Cheney and other critics pointed to these linguistic changes
to question President Obama’s commitment to fighting terrorism.
Obviously, language matters in the politics of counterterrorism poli-
cies. In early January 2010, when asked by George Stephanopoulos
of ABC News for recommendations to tighten aviation security, U.S.
Representative Peter King (R-N.Y.) said up front, “I think one main
thing would be to—just himself [President Obama] to use the word
terrorism more often.”47 Shortly thereafter, in his State of the Union
address, the president said pointedly, “Since the day I took office, we’ve
renewed our focus on the terrorists who threaten our nation.” In the
previous year, he had used the “T”-word sparingly but, contrary to his
critics’ claims, not avoided it altogether. However, as time went by,
the White House and others in the Obama administration as well as
European Union agencies preferred to call nonstate political violence
against civilians and noncombatants “violent extremism.” During his
campaign and presidency Donald Trump spoke often and forcefully of
“radical Islamic terrorism” and thus suggested that terrorism and Islam
are closely linked.

What is Violence?
While there is no consensus among scholars on the definition of
terrorism, it is agreed that terrorism involves acts of violence.
When it comes to defining violence, however, we find different
explanations as well.
The Perennial Debate 33
The English Dictionary (online) defines violence as “behavior
involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone
or something.” Other definitions transcend the notion that violence
is limited to physical force and physical consequences. Philosopher
Robert L. Holmes, an expert on nonviolence, put forth the follow-
ing definition:

Physical violence, which is what we most often have in mind

when we speak about violence, is the use of physical force to
cause harm, death, or destruction, as in rape, murder, or war-
fare. But some forms of mental or psychological harm are so
severe as to warrant being called violence as well. People can
be harmed mentally and emotionally in ways that are as bad as
by physical violence.48

Sociologist Mary R. Jackman defines violence as “actions that inflict,

threaten, or cause injury. Actions may be corporal, written, or verbal.
Injuries may be corporal, psychological, material, or social.”49
Addressing harmful spoken and written words, Jackman concludes,

Verbal and written actions that derogate, defame, or humiliate

an individual or group may inflict substantial psychological,
social, or material injuries without being as conspicuous or fla-
grant as physical violence.50

While the definitions above affirm the old children’s rhyme, “sticks
and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me,”
there are indications that words of hate and threat can cause physi-
cal harm besides psychological, social, and material injuries. This is
precisely what the legal scholar Mari Matsuda argues, namely, that
“violence of the word” can inflict physical injury in that “victims
of vicious hate propaganda have experienced physiological symp-
toms and emotional distress ranging from fear in the gut, rapid
pulse rate and difficulty in breathing, nightmares, post-traumatic
stress disorder, hypertension, psychosis, and suicide.”51
Add to this the fact that hate speech can encourage individu-
als and groups to resort to violent actions against the targets of
violent words. Take the example of Dylann Roof who in 2015
shot to death nine African Americans at the end of a Bible study
meeting in a Charleston, S.C., church. In his online “manifesto”
he described how posted words on White Supremacy websites
had awoken his racial awareness and convinced him to move
from mere words of violence to actual deeds. He singled out the
(continued)
34 Terrorism
(continued)
website of the Council of Conservative Citizens, a White Supre
macy organization, as the first and deepest influence on his hatred
of African Americans.
Violence can also be carried out by acoustical devices. Long
Range Acoustic Devices are utilized by police and military units. In
the United States, these devices have been used for crowd control—
for example, in Ferguson, Missouri, following the 2014 shooting
of Michael Brown, and during protests at the G20 Summit in
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 2009. Targets of acoustic blasts feel
sharp pain with the potential for long-term hearing impairment. The
military siege of Fallujah in 2004 began by “bombarding the city
with music—supposedly, with Metallica’s ‘Hells’ Bells’ and ‘Shoot
to Thrill’ among other things.”52 It does not matter whether music
or other sound bombs are deployed. Rather, as Suzanne Cusick
notes, “the use of music as a weapon is perceived to be incidental
to the use of sound’s ability to affect a person’s spatial orienta-
tion, sense of balance, and physical coordination.”53 Similarly, “no
touch torture” that was carried out in U.S.-run prison facilities dur-
ing the interrogation of terrorists or suspected terrorists included
the non-stop playing of super-loud music.
Last but not least, there is visual violence with harmful con-
sequences. Research pioneered by George Gerbner links the
prevalence of violence in television news and entertainment to the
heightened fear on the part of heavy TV watchers (more than three
hours a day) of becoming victims of violence themselves.54 Pointing
to what she calls “media violence” and “entertainment violence”
Sissela Bok, too, recognizes a direct relationship between the pre-
ponderance of violent visuals in television and motion pictures and
“emotional disturbances such as persistent nightmares, depression,
irritability, inability to concentrate, and hypervigilance at sounds or
motions that might constitute a threat.”55 Research shows also that
the multitude of violent screen images can affect heavy TV watchers
to respond with heightened aggressiveness or desensitization which
can cause some of them to commit violence or consider violence to
be the normal state of affairs.
On the day of Halloween 2017, Sayfullo Saipoy drove a truck
into pedestrians and cyclists in New York City killing eight persons.
When questioned by investigators he claimed that he was inspired
to carry out the attack after watching ISIS videos on his cellphone.
Indeed, the FBI found ninety videos on one of his phones, among
them images of ISIS fighters running over a prisoner with a tank, of
beheading scenes, and of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the group’s leader.
The Perennial Debate 35
Whether displayed on TV, computer, or smart phone screens violent
images seem to have similar effects.
After working for three months as content moderator for
Facebook in Berlin, Burcu Gueltekin Punsmann left his job. As he
explained,

I had to quit as I was particularly disturbed by what I saw as

signs of professional deformation in me: a kind of hyper vigi-
lance (especially about the risks for my family). I was dream-
ing about the job and my own perception of reality shifted in
a most concerning way. The terrible Las Vegas Shooting sud-
denly seemed entirely normal to me.56

In conclusion, then, violence can be corporal, written, verbal,

acoustical, and visual.

State Terror(ism)
By suggesting a focus on terrorism by nonstate actors, this book does
not minimize or excuse the violence perpetrated by governments and
their agents against civilians and noncombatants—more often than not
in covert ways. Acknowledging that “governments and their agents can
practice terrorism” inside their countries or abroad, Crenshaw points
out that such “use is usually carefully concealed in order to avoid public
attribution of responsibility.”57 Moreover, when committed by govern-
ments, violence against civilians and noncombatants can be and has been
in many instances equally as brutal and lethal as the actions of nonstate
actors and, in fact, far more cruel and deadly. But when governments
commit this type of violence, there are a number of appropriate pejorative
terms, such as war crimes, crimes against humanity, human rights viola-
tions, genocide, atrocities—and terror. As the linguist Geoffrey Nunberg
has noted, “Unlike ‘terrorism,’ ‘terror’ can be applied to states as well
as to insurgent groups.”58 Bruce Hoffman, too, points to the distinction
between terror to characterize state violence “mostly against domestic
populations” and terrorism to describe violence by “nonstate entities.”59
Post-World War I Germany can serve as an example here. Beginning
in the 1920s, well-organized, violent groups of Adolf Hitler’s follow-
ers attacked political opponents and stirred the political instability that
brought him to power in 1933. Clearly, the terrorist tactic (i.e., politi-
cal violence against civilians by nonstate actors) was successful in this
case, as it was in the coming to power of another fascist ruler, Hitler’s
contemporary Benito Mussolini in Italy. The state of violence during the
Hitler years was primarily directed against Jews, who were the victims
36 Terrorism
of genocide, and also against other “undesirable elements,” such as com-
munists, socialists, and gypsies. During Hitler’s reign of terror, more than
10 million innocent civilians were brutally tortured and killed according
to government policies. This was unspeakable state terror, as were the
imprisonment and killing of many millions of people in the Soviet Union
during Joseph Stalin’s rule. More recently, totalitarian regimes in various
parts of the world oppressed, persecuted, tortured, and killed thousands,
hundreds of thousands, and millions of people within their borders—in
Argentina, Cambodia, Uganda, Iraq, Sudan, and many other places. No
case of nonstate political violence comes even close to the enormity of
these atrocities. To characterize this kind of political violence committed
by the power-holders in states as “terrorism” would actually minimize
the enormity of systematic political violence and mass killings of civilians
by those in control of states.
In his extensive documentation, explanation, and discussion of “death
by government,” R. J. Rummel, too, does not include state terrorism or
government terrorism as definitional concepts, but distinguishes between
genocide (the killing of people because of their ethnic, racial, religious,
and/or linguistic group membership), “politicide” (the killing of persons
because of their “politics or for political purposes”), mass murder or
massacre (the indiscriminate killing of persons), and terror (defined as
“extrajudicial execution, slaying, assassination, abduction, or disappear-
ance forever of targeted individuals”).60 More important, Rummel comes
up with a useful definition of illegitimate state violence (“democide”)
that includes genocide, politicide, mass murder, terror, and, in addition,
what each of these four categories excludes. Thus, the author explains
democide as

the intentional killing of an unarmed or disarmed person by gov-

ernment agents acting in their authoritative capacity and pursuant
to government policy or high command (as in the Nazi gassing of
Jews) . . . It is democide if governments promoted or turned a blind
eye to these deaths even though they were murders carried out “unof-
ficially” or by private groups (as by death squads in Guatemala or El
Salvador). And these deaths also may be democide if high government
officials purposely allowed conditions to continue that were causing
mass deaths and issued no public warning (as in the Ethiopian fam-
ines of the 1970s). All extra-judicial executions or summary execu-
tions comprise democide. Even judicial executions may be democide,
as in the Soviet show trials of the late 1930s.61

So, choosing different definitions is a way to mark the distinction between

different perpetrators of deliberate political violence against civilians
and noncombatants—one when governments commit this sort of vio-
lence (democide, terror), and another when groups or individuals are the
The Perennial Debate 37
perpetrators (terrorism). The decision to use the same word or different
terms in itself does not make value judgments and minimize or maximize
the seriousness and scope of either state or nonstate political violence.
Conceptual differentiation in this particular case offers the opportunity
of dealing separately with terrorism (the topic of this book) and state ter-
ror or democide (not the topic of this book).

The Meaning of Terrorism in this Volume

I agree with Walter Laqueur’s suggestion that new and multiple defi-
nitions are needed to get a better handle on the distinctive features of
different kinds of political violence committed by different types of
actors. For the time being, I prefer the distinction between terror and
terrorism. This, then, is my definition of terrorism in the context of this
volume:

Terrorism is political violence or the threat of violence by groups

or individuals who deliberately target civilians or noncombatants in
order to influence the behavior and actions of targeted publics and
governments.

Is Terrorism Ever Justified?

Some of the leading political theorists of our time have lined up on
sharply opposite sides in arguing against and for the notion of just ter-
rorism. Drawing on his comprehensive work on just and unjust wars
Michael Walzer rejects any suggestions that in certain cases terrorism in
the sense of political violence against civilians can be justified. Instead,
he states categorically, “every act of terrorism is a wrongful act.”62 In
order to strengthen his position, Walzer refutes the four most commonly
made arguments to justify or excuse nonstate actors’ political violence
against civilians: (1) that terrorism is a last resort which is only perpe-
trated when all other options fail; (2) that terrorism is justifiable in case
of national liberation movements fighting against mighty states; (3) that
unlike other options terrorism does work, does achieve the ends of the
perpetrators; (4) that all politics comes down to terrorism.63 Similarly,
Jürgen Habermas stated shortly after the 9/11 attacks,

From a moral point of view, there is no excuse for terrorist acts,

regardless of the motives or situation under which they are carried out.
Nothing justifies our “making allowance for” the murder or suffering
of others for one’s own purposes. Each murder is one too many.64

Habermas pointed to the difference between violence as crime and polit-

ical tool and recognized the possibility of terrorists drawing “at least
38 Terrorism
retrospectively, a certain legitimation for their criminal actions, under-
taken to overcome a manifestly unjust situation.” But he seemed to
exclude catastrophic terrorism from the possibility of any such future
legitimation when he said, “Today, I cannot imagine a context that would
some day, in some manner, make the monstrous crime of September 11
an understandable or comprehensible political act.”65
Other philosophers in Europe and the United States, such as Jacques
Derrida, Ted Honderich, and Noam Chomsky, have rejected defini-
tions and arguments that differentiate between political violence against
civilians by nonstate and state actors and between terrorism and war.
After her long conversation with Jacques Derrida, Giovanna Borradori
revealed, “In Derrida’s mind, it is impossible to draw any distinctions
regarding terrorism—between war and terrorism, state and nonstate
terrorism, terrorism and national liberation movements, national and
international terrorism.”66
Along these lines, Honderich, Chomsky, and other philosophers point
to past and present wrongs by the United States and other Western coun-
tries that killed and otherwise harmed many civilians in many parts of
the world. To rise up in efforts to correct such wrongdoing, they justify
certain types of nonstate political violence.
Honderich in particular considers liberation terrorism justified when
it is the only means to win freedom from domestic or foreign oppressors.
While his major focus is on violence in the Israeli and Palestinian conflict,
he extends his arguments in favor of justified terrorism to other groups
and settings. With respect to the 9/11 attacks, Honderich made the fol-
lowing statement:

The wrong done on September 11 is untouched by the weak idea,

having to do with our wrongful omissions, that two wrongs make
a right or that two wrongs go somewhere towards making a right.
Two wrongs do not make a right because the second victim was the
first perpetrator—or because the second victim invited that second
wrong. The attack of September 11 was wrong, rather, because there
could be no certainty or significant probability, no reasonable hope,
that it would work to secure a justifying end, but only a certainty
that it would destroy lives horribly.67

In other words, had there been a chance that the just ends of 9/11 ter-
rorism were achieved or furthered, the catastrophic strikes would be
justified. Moving terrorism into the realm of “moral legitimacy” is
strongly rejected by Walzer who argues, “Even if American policies in
the Middle East and East Asia have been wrong in many ways, they
don’t excuse the terrorist attack; they don’t even make it morally com-
prehensible. The murder of innocent people is not excusable.”68 But in
The Perennial Debate 39
an afterthought Walzer asks the question whether terrorism could be
justified in a “supreme emergency,” a concept he discussed earlier with
respect to war and deliberate attacks on civilian populations. “It might
be [justified terrorism], but only if the oppression to which the terrorists
claimed to be responding was genocidal in character,” he answers.69 He
adds that “this kind of threat has not been present in any of the recent
cases of terrorist activity.”70

Terrorism Studies, a Field in Search of Theory and

Methodology
Terrorism and political violence studies have been criticized for their lack
of theory and methodology suited for generalizations and comparative
inquiries. The post-9/11 proliferation of terrorism experts, grants, stud-
ies, and publications “has not been accompanied by scientific quality
and has experienced limited empirical investigation.”71 However, social
movement theory, including its attention to contentious politics, could
and should be utilized and adapted to study and explain what I define as
“terrorism” and Donatella della Porta, a leading scholar in the field, calls
“clandestine political violence”—probably a less controversial term than
the “T”-word.72
Foremost social movement scholars, such as Sidney G. Tarrow, Doug
McAdam, and Charles Tilly, have in fact argued “for an integration of
social movement studies with the analysis of more violent forms of conten-
tion [including terrorism].”73 To be sure, not all terrorist groups amount
to or are part of a larger social movement but at minimum they all are
staging violent acts of contentious politics. Tilly and Tarrow point out that
“contentious politics involves many different forms and combinations of
collective action.”74 While studies of both social movements and conten-
tious politics deal overwhelmingly with peaceful collective actions, they
include increasingly various forms of violence. That is a welcome oppor-
tunity to adapt contentious politics/social movement theory and develop
theoretical frameworks for studying and explaining terrorism. While this
is not the place to write in great detail about contentious politics and social
movement theory, an explanation is needed of those theoretical compo-
nents that seem most helpful in the context of terrorism studies.
For Tarrow, “contentious politics occurs when ordinary people . . .
join forces in confrontation with elites, authorities, and opponents.”75
Typically, contentious politics are protests against governments and their
policies. For contentious collective actions to grow into social move-
ments, such protests must be frequent and backed by organized support
groups and cultural symbols that arrive from ideology, grievances, and
objectives. Tilly and Wood list the following combination of character-
istics that elevate contentious politics to the level of social movements:
40 Terrorism
•• Sustained, organized public efforts making claims on target authorities;
•• Combinations of political actions or performances, what they call a
repertoire;
•• Public representations of WUNC (worthiness, unity, numbers, and
commitment).76

Political actions here are compared to performances that are drawn

from repertoires and staged in theaters or arenas for the benefit of those
who are watching—in our times via various media of communication.
Interestingly, terrorism scholars, too, have invoked the theater meta-
phor. According to Brian Jenkins, “terrorism is aimed at the people
watching, not the actual victims. Terrorism is theater.”77 And Gabriel
Weimann and Conrad Winn wrote perceptively that “modern terrorism
can be understood in terms of the productions requirements of theatrical
engagements.”78 No wonder, then, that Donatella della Porta suggests
that “some explanation of violence [including clandestine political vio-
lence or terrorism] can be derived from their [social movement scholars’]
research on repertoires of protest.”79 Applied to terrorism, the repertoire
perspective strengthens with the inclusion of the suggested WUNC rep-
resentations since all four types figure prominently in the explanation of
terrorism as communicative act. Social movements, whether nonviolent
or violent, require publicity and most try to stage mass-mediated events
to propagate the worthiness of their motives and strength through unity,
numbers, and commitment to their causes. The terrorist repertoire of
performances and related publicity efforts are discussed in some detail in
Chapters 14 and 15. While these repertoires of performances are central
to the framing and self-framing of social movements, including those of
the terrorist variety, two other perspectives in social movement theory—
political opportunities and mobilizing resources—are utilized to examine
expressions of political contention. In their efforts to bring theoretical
frameworks into terrorism studies, several scholars have suggested bor-
rowing from those social movement foci and linking macro-, mesa-, and
micro-levels. As della Porta explains,

They [macro-, mesa-, and micro-levels] address one of three ques-

tions: In what type of society is political violence most likely to
develop—that is, what environmental conditions foster political vio-
lence? Which groups are most likely to use violent repertoires—that
is, which characteristics of political organizations eventually lead
them to adopt the most extreme forms of political violence? Which
individuals are most likely to resort to political violence?80

To put it differently, there are three distinct levels in terrorism stud-

ies: (1) the larger environmental conditions, whether local, national, or
transnational; (2) the dynamics within groups and movements, including
The Perennial Debate 41
organizational forms, resources, and ideology; and (3) membership, lead-
ership, gender, roles, and cohesion.
Whenever possible I will pay attention to these levels of inquiry
throughout the book.

Notes
1 Mark Berman, “Was the Charlottesville Car Attack Domestic Terrorism, a
Hate Crime or Both?” Washington Post, August 14, 2017, https://search.
yahoo.com/search?p=stabbing+attack+New+York+city&fr=yfp-t&fp=1&to
ggle=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF-8, accessed January 15, 2018.
2 From “The Public Papers of the President, Administration of William J.
Clinton,” 1998, 2124.
3 For the most authoritative book on McVeigh, see Lou Michel and Dan
Herbeck, American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City
Bombing (New York: Regan Books, 2001).
4 Alex Houen, Terrorism and Modern Literature: From Joseph Conrad to
Ciaran Carson (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 9.
5 A. Odasuo Alali and Kenoye Kelvin Eke, eds., Media Coverage of Terrorism:
Methods of Diffusion (Newbury Park, CA: SAGE, 1991), 30.
6 Martha Crenshaw, ed., Terrorism in Context (University Park: Pennsylvania
State University Press, 1995), 7.
7 Richard E. Rubenstein, Alchemists of Revolution (New York: Basic Books,
1987), 17, 18.
8 James J. F. Forest, “Criminals and Terrorists: An Introduction to the Special
Issue,” Terrorism and Political Violence 24:2 (2012): 173.
9 The words were part of Yousef’s statement before he was sentenced by
Judge Kevin Thomas Duffy of the Federal District Court in Manhattan
on January 8, 1998. See, “Excerpts from Statements in Court,” New York
Times, January 8, 1998, B4.
10 Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism (New York: Columbia University Press,
1998), 28–29.
11 The distinction between terrorism “from above” and “from below” is made
in Walter Laqueur, A History of Terrorism (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction
Publishers, 2002), ch. 1; and Walter Laqueur, The Age of Terrorism (Boston:
Little, Brown, 1987), ch. 1.
12 Rubenstein, 17.
13 Crenshaw, 4.
14 Shoe bomber Reid and Judge Young were quoted in Pam Belluck, “Threats and
Responses: The Shoe Plot; Unrepentant Shoe Bomber Sentenced to Life,” New
York Times, January 31, 2003, A13; and Thanassis Cambanis, “Sentenced to
Life, Reid Denounces US,” Boston Globe, January 31, 2003, A1.
15 See, for example, W. Lance Bennett, News: The Politics of Illusion (New
York: Longman, 2001); and Brigitte L. Nacos, Mass-Mediated Terrorism: The
Centrality of the Media in Terrorism and Counterterrorism (Lanham, MD:
Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), especially ch. 5.
16 Edward Herman and Gerry O’Sullivan, The Terrorism Industry: The Experts
and Institutions That Shape Our View of Terror (New York: Pantheon
Books, 1989).
17 “Statement for the Record of Dale L. Watson Executive Assistant Director
Counterterrorism and Counterintelligence Federal Bureau of Investigation on
the Terrorist Threat Confronting the United States before the Senate Select
Committee on Intelligence Washington D.C.,” February 6, 2002.
42 Terrorism
18 Houen, 7–8. Houen writes that individual governments have been “swift to
ratify their own definitions” but that the international dimensions of 9/11
kept the definitional problem alive. But disagreements over the definition of
political violence continue to exist with respect to both domestic and interna-
tional terrorism.
19 This definition was mentioned in Oliver Libaw, “Defining Terrorism: Little
Agreement on Where to Draw the Line,” abcnews.go.com/sections/world/
dailynews/stratfor001117.html, October 11, 2001.
20 This new definition of terrorism in general and FEMA’s definitions of domes-
tic and international terrorism were available on FEMA’s website, www.fema.
gov/hazards/terrorism/terror.shtm, accessed January 12, 2003.
21 The definitions are contained in many FBI documents and statements; see, for
example, “Statement for the Record of Dale L. Watson.”
22 Jessica Stern, “The Protean Enemy,” Foreign Affairs (July–August 2003): 34.
23 For more extensive excerpts from the interview, see www.memri.org/report/
en/0/0/0/0/0/0/4202.htm, accessed May 25, 2010.
24 From ISIS’s online magazine Dabiq, issue 4, page 9.
25 For details on the U.S. military’s involvement in Lebanon, see David C. Martin
and John Walcott, Best Laid Plans (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), chs. 5
and 6.
26 Hoffman, 43.
27 Herman and O’Sullivan, 214.
28 The definition is quoted by Hoffman, 38.
29 C. J. M. Drake, “The Role of Ideology in Terrorists’ Target Selection,”
Terrorism and Political Violence 10:2 (Summer 1998): 53.
30 Michael Stohl, “Characteristics of Contemporary International Terrorism,”
in Charles W. Kegley Jr., ed., International Terrorism: Characteristics, Causes,
Controls (New York: St. Martin’s, 1990), 83.
31 Ibid.
32 The definition was quoted by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime on its web-
site, www.unodc.org, accessed January 7, 2003.
33 Contained in GA Res. 51/210, “Measures to Eliminate International
Terrorism,” as excerpted by www.unodc.org.
34 For more on the failure to reach an agreement at the UN after 9/11, see
Michael Jordan, “Terrorism’s Slippery Definition Eludes UN Diplomats,”
Christian Science Monitor (February 4, 2002): 7.
35 Associated Press, “Muslim Meeting Won’t Define Terror,” New York Times,
April 3, 2002.
36 Walter Laqueur, The New Terrorism (New York: Oxford University Press,
1999), 6.
37 The definition is quoted by Hoffman, 33.
38 Robert G. Picard and Paul D. Adams, “Characterizations of Acts and
Perpetrators of Political Violence in Three Elite U.S. Daily Newspapers,” in
Alali and Eke, 12–21. The content analysis covered pertinent news coverage
from 1980 through 1985.
39 Cited by John O’Sullivan, “Retracting Required,” National Review, September
25, 2001, www.nationalreview.com/jos/jos092501.shtml, accessed January
12, 2002; and Norman Solomon, “Media Spin Revolved around the Word
‘Terrorist,’” Media Beat, October 4, 2001, www.fair.org/media-beat/o11004.
html, accessed January 9, 2003.
40 Cited by O’Sullivan.
41 Lou Gelfand, “Newspaper Careful in Use of Label ‘Terrorist,’” Star Tribune,
February 3, 2002, 27A. See also “‘Terrorism’ Is a Term that Requires
Consistency: Newspaper and Its Critics Both Show a Double Standard on
The Perennial Debate 43
‘Terror,’” Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, April 8, 2002, www.fair.org/
press-release/terrorism.html, accessed January 4, 2003.
42 Michael Getler, “The Language of Terrorism,” Washington Post, September
21, 2003, B6.
43 Ibid.
44 Ibid.
45 Katia Bachko, “War of Words,” Columbia Journalism Review (Online),
January 8, 2009. See www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/war_of_the_words.php,
accessed January 11, 2009.
46 “Away from the Politics of Fear,” Der Spiegel, March 16, 2010, www.spiegel.
de/international/world/0,1518,613330,00.html, accessed May 25, 2010.
47 Ben Smith, “King: Use Word ‘Terrorism’ More,” www.politico.com/blogs/
bensmith/0110/King_Use_word_terrorism_more.html?showall, accessed
May 12, 2010.
48 Robert L. Holmes, Nonviolence in Theory and Practice (Belmont, CA:
Wadsworth, 1990), 1–2.
49 Mary R. Jackson, “Violence in Social Life,” Annual Review of Sociology 28
(2002): 405.
50 Ibid., 396.
51 Mari J. Matsuda, “Public Response to Racist Speech: Considering the Victim’s
Story,” Michigan Law Review 87:24 (1989): 2320, 2336.
52 Suzanne G. Cusick, “Music as Torture/Music as Weapon,” available at http://
www.sibetrans.com/trans/articulo/152/music-as-torture-, accessed January
18, 2018.
53 Ibid.
54 George Gerbner et al., “The ‘Mainstreaming’ of America: Violence Profile No.
11, Journal of Communication 30:3 (Summer 1980).
55 Sissela Bok, Mayhem: Violence as Public Entertainment (Reading, MA:
Perseus Books, 1998), 65.
56 Burco Gueltekin Punsmann, “Three Months in Hell,” Sueddeutsche Zeitung,
January 6, 2018, https://sz-magazin.sueddeutsche.de/internet/three-months-
in-hell-84381, accessed March 5, 2018.
57 Crenshaw, 4.
58 Geoffrey Nunberg, “How Much Wallop Can a Simple Word Pack?” New
York Times, July 11, 2004, sec. 4, 7.
59 Hoffman, 25.
60 R. J. Rummel, Death by Government, ch. 2, www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/
welcome.html. Rummel’s website offers a great deal of information about
cases in which governments systematically and intentionally killed large
numbers of people inside and outside their own borders.
61 Ibid.
62 Michael Walzer, Arguing About War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
2004), 52.
63 Walzer, 53–60.
64 Citation taken from Giovanna Borradori, Philosophy in a Time of Terror:
Dialogues with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida (Chicago: University
Press of Chicago, 2003), 34.
65 Ibid.
66 Borradori, 153.
67 Ted Honderich, “After the Terror: A Book and Further Thoughts,” Journal of
Ethics 7 (2003): 175.
68 Walzer, 135.
69 Walzer, 54.
70 Ibid.
44 Terrorism
71 Donatella della Porta, Clandestine Political Violence (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2013), 11.
72 As the above note shows, “clandestine political violence” is the title of her
book.
73 Sidney G. Tarrow, Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious
Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), xvii.
74 Charles Tilly and Sidney Tarrow, Contentious Politics (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2007), 27.
75 Tarrow, 6.
76 Charles Tilly and Lesley J. Wood, Social Movements, 2nd ed. (Boulder, CO:
Paradigm, 2009), 3–4.
77 Brian M. Jenkins, “International Terrorism: A New Kind of Warfare” (Santa
Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, 1974), 6.
78 Gabriel Weimann and Conrad Winn, The Theater of Terror: Mass Media and
International Terrorism (New York: Longman, 1994), 52.
79 Della Porta, 15.
80 Della Porta, 21. In her excellent book Clandestine Political Violence Donatella
della Porta developed her three-pronged model of “mechanisms in the evo-
lution of clandestine political violence” that distinguish between “Onset,”
“Persistence,” and “Exit” phases in the life of terrorist networks and move-
ments. Interestingly, she is able to utilize the same model for her study of
left-wing and right-wing terrorism in Italy and Germany during the 1970s
and 1980s; Basque ethno-nationalist terrorism in Spain during the same time
period; and religious terrorism (Al Qaeda).
3 Terrorism in the Global Context

Terrorism has been used as a weapon of the weak against militarily,

politically, and economically stronger rulers and governments for a long
time and in many parts of the world. The earliest cases of terrorism had
religious and political overtones and date back to biblical times. The
Sicariis, a distinct group, were involved in the Zealots’ struggle against
the Roman occupiers of Palestine and fellow Jews who collaborated with
the Romans. The Sicariis attacked their targets typically on holidays and
in the midst of large crowds with a “sica,” a small sword that was hid-
den beneath their coats until they were close enough to stab their victims.
Although fighting in the name of God, whom they considered their only
legitimate ruler, they had immediate political motives—most of all the
burning desire to remove the secular foreign rulers from power. However,
the terror campaign ended in AD 73, when hundreds of Zealots commit-
ted mass suicide rather than surrender to the victorious Romans.
Far more enduring than the Sicariis were the Assassins (eleventh to
thirteenth centuries), an extremist offshoot of the Ismaili branch of
Shi’ite Islam, who were active in Persia (now Iran) and Syria. Hassan-
i-Sabbah, the founder of this fiercely anti-Sunni sect, was poised to
spread his brand of Ismaili Islam throughout the Middle East and defeat
the Sunni rulers. He convinced his fanatically devoted followers that
actively fighting for their cause would assure them a place in paradise.
Recognizing that their membership was too small to fight their enemies
openly, the Assassins operated clandestinely until the assigned member
or members attacked a prominent leader—typically in front of large
crowds. They assaulted their targets with daggers and made no attempt
to escape but seemed content, even eager, to be caught and killed after
they had accomplished their lethal missions. Thus, in today’s parlance,
the Assassins practiced a form of “suicide terrorism.”
Rumor had it that the Assassins were under the influence of hashish
when they envisioned paradise, when they attacked their targets, and
when they went eagerly to their death. Indeed, because of the myth of
their wide use of hashish, the members of the sect were called hashishin
in Arabic; this name turned into “assassin” in the vocabulary of the
Christian Crusaders and eventually came to mean political murder in
46 Terrorism
many Western languages. The Assassins did not realize their religious
and political goals but were wiped out when the Mongols conquered Iran
and Syria in the middle of the thirteenth century. Nevertheless, as one ter-
rorism expert pointed out, the Assassins “demonstrated a basic principle
of contemporary terrorism: the ability of small groups to wage effective
campaigns of terror against much stronger opponents.”1
The Thugs, who organized in the eleventh century, terrorized India
for hundreds of years before the British destroyed them in the nineteenth
century. Group members targeted travelers and strangled their victims
with a silk tie before robbing them. According to rumors, the Thugs wor-
shiped the goddess Kali and killed so that they could nourish her with
the blood of their victims. But it is not clear whether the Thugs practiced
religious terrorism or were simply bandits out for material gains. One
way or the other, today the term thug characterizes a hoodlum, crook,
thief—in other words, a criminal.
Beginning in the Middle Ages, Christian sects also resorted to vio-
lence. Typically following a charismatic leader or prophet, they claimed
to fight for the purification of the Christian religion and Christian life.
Their targets were Jews and whoever they considered Christians in name
only. Following the Reformation, for example, the Anabaptists, a millen-
nial sect, emerged in Germany. Members of the group considered the city
of Muenster as the true Jerusalem and themselves as God’s chosen instru-
ments in the violent campaign against the anti-Christ—sinful Catholics
and Protestants who stood in the way of the millennium.
No doubt, then, that terrorism originated with religious and pseudor-
eligious sects and that the adherents of the major religions, among them
the Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, and Sikhs, resorted to
political violence in the name of God.

Different Types of Groups

Besides religious terrorism, which will be discussed in Chapter 5, several
other major types of both international and domestic terrorism emerged in
more recent times. The majority of groups that resort to political violence
fit the following categories: nationalist/separatist, left and/or revolutionary,
right and/or reactionary, antiglobalization, and extreme environmental-
ist. As the name suggests, nationalists/separatists strive for statehood or
more autonomy; good examples here are Palestinian organizations, such
as the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Hamas, or the Basque
group Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA). The former demand an independ-
ent Palestinian state, the latter fought for independence from Spain. Left/
revolutionary groups like the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
(FARC) and Sendero Luminoso or Shining Path in Peru wanted to
establish Communist regimes. In Venezuela, the right-wing United Self-
Defense Forces of Venezuela fought to remove the leftist government of
Terrorism in the Global Context 47
Hugo Chavez working closely with the right-wing Self-Defense Forces of
Colombia. Antiglobalization groups, such as the Mexican Fuerzas Armadas
Revolucionarias del Pueblo, are often also left-leaning. Others fit both the
profile of anarchists and extreme globalization foes. Thus, the self-pro-
claimed anarchists who provoked what came to be known as “The Battle
of Seattle” during the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) summit in 1999,
staged violence to express their opposition to globalization and thereby
energized the antiglobalization movement for years to come. Militant envi-
ronmental groups, such as the international organizations Earth First, Earth
Liberation Front, and Animal Liberation Front, resort to violent means in
North America and in Europe, especially the United Kingdom, in the name
of protecting the natural environment that they say is not conserved by
governments. In the process, they commit violence or ecoterrorism to help a
cause that they have been unable to further in the legitimate political arena.
The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is another militant eco-organization;
it operates in international waters and, according to its website,

“uses innovative direct-action tactics to investigate, document, and

take action when necessary to expose and confront illegal activities
on the high seas. By safeguarding the biodiversity of our delicately-
balanced ocean ecosystems, Sea Shepherd works to ensure their sur-
vival for future generations.”2

To that end, Sea Shepherd ships have particularly targeted whaling vessels.
In a story about Paul Watson, the founder and leader of Sea Shepherd,
Raffi Khatchagourian noted, “By Watson’s count, Sea Shepherd has sunk
ten whaling vessels in port. By my count, he and his crew have attempted
to scuttle two vessels and have successfully sunk two others.”3 But whether
Watson exaggerated or not, another well-known international eco-organi-
zation, Greenpeace, which lists “defending our oceans” among its missions,
distanced itself from the Sea Shepherd Society and Watson, a former mem-
ber of Greenpeace. According to Greenpeace’s website, the organization
denied Watson’s request to reveal the location of whalers because

if we helped Sea Shepherd to find the whaling fleet we’d be respon-

sible for anything they did having got that information, and history
shows that they’ve used violence in the past, in the most danger-
ous seas on Earth. For us, non-violence is a non-negotiable, precious
principle. Greenpeace will continue to act to defend the whales, but
will never attack or endanger the whalers.4

The Roots of Modern Terrorism

The origins of modern terrorism “from below”—or political violence
directed against the forces of power in society, namely, political leaders—go
48 Terrorism
back to the second half of the nineteenth century. In the first stage, radical
socialists and anarchists contributed to the theoretical underpinnings of a
philosophy of violence as a means to fight and destroy oppressive leaders
and governments. In 1849, a journal in Switzerland that was edited by
political refugees from Germany published a radical tract under the head-
line “Der Mord” (Murder), in which its author, Karl Heinzen, laid out the
rationale for terrorist action against “reactionaries” and “the mass party
of the barbarians.” Accusing the people in power of “mass murder, organ-
ized murder, or war, as it is called,” Heinzen concluded,

Even if we have to blow up half a continent or spill a sea of blood,

in order to finish off the barbarian party, we should have no scruples
about doing it. The man who would not joyfully give up his own life
for the satisfaction of putting a million barbarians into their coffins
carries no Republican heart within his breast.5

Heinzen advocated murder for political ends, or what soon thereafter

was defined as terrorism, even if that meant death for members of what
he called “the party of freedom.” Heinzen anticipated the development
of weapons that would make political violence “from below” far more
lethal and effective when he wrote, “The greatest benefactor of mankind
will be he who makes it possible for a few men to wipe out thousands.”6
One hundred and fifty years later, Osama bin Laden and the Al Qaeda
organization embraced the same idea when they searched for weapons of
mass destruction.
In Russia, Sergey Nechaev, Nikolai Morozov, and Pyotr Kropotkin
were among the radical leaders who justified terrorist means in their
writings and prescribed rules of conduct for the true revolutionary to fol-
low. The terms revolutionary and terrorist were used interchangeably.
Although living for most of his political life in Switzerland, Mikhail
Bakunin, who advocated his own brand of anarchism, had devoted follow-
ers in Russia. During this era, the most influential terrorist-revolutionary
organization in Russia was the Narodnaya Volga (The People’s Will)
because it made the step from radical rhetoric to actual terrorist acts,
which included the assassination of Czar Alexander II in 1881.
The anarchist movement was not limited to Russia but was truly
international and became associated with political violence during the
1880s and 1890s and, to a lesser extent, in the first decade of the twen-
tieth century. During that period, anarchists and social revolutionaries
were responsible for a wave of political assassinations in several coun-
tries, among them Russia, France, Spain, and Italy. The United States
was not immune either because European immigrants, among them Karl
Heinzen and John Most, advocated anarchist ideas and deeds in their
new homeland. The anarchists of this era did not strike randomly but
targeted high-ranking political figures, among them French President
Terrorism in the Global Context 49
Sadi Carnot, Spanish Prime Minister Antonio Canovas, King Umberto of
Italy, Empress Elisabeth of Austria, and U.S. Presidents James Garfield
and William McKinley. Sometimes, anarchists aborted their assassination
plans because they did not want to harm innocent bystanders. Attempts on
the lives of other prominent figures, among them the German Chancellor
Otto von Bismarck and the German Emperor William II, failed. But, as
Laqueur has pointed out, “Inasmuch as the assassins were anarchists—
and quite a few were not—they all acted on their own initiative without
the knowledge and support of the groups to which they belonged.”7
Although left-wing movements occupy a dominant place in the annals
of terrorism for the years between about 1850 and World War I, a vari-
ety of very different groups resorted to political violence during this
period—among them Irish nationalists fighting against the British, and
Armenians struggling against Turkish oppression. But the leading fig-
ures in the anarchist and social reform movements were the ones who
provided the theoretical underpinnings for political violence and thereby
have influenced terrorists of all ideological colors ever since.
Between World War I and World War II, right-wing movements in
particular embraced the “propaganda by the deed” maxim, but it was
especially the emerging fascist camps that used political violence in their
push for power. Italian dictator Benito Mussolini made no secret of his
sympathy for violence, and Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler’s propagan-
dist-in-chief, considered terror and brutality in the streets as sure means
for rather obscure groups to become widely known and win the support
of the masses. Extremists at the right and left were very similar in that
they recognized the efficacy of political violence as a tool to undermine
the legitimacy of the political systems they opposed. And although in
some instances terrorist theory preceded terrorist actions, as in the case
of the anarchists, it was the other way around in at least as many cases.
According to Walter Laqueur’s astute observation,

In short, it has been possible since time immemorial to make love and
to cook without the help of textbooks; the same applied to terrorism.
In some cases the decision to adopt a terrorist strategy was taken on
the basis of a detailed political analysis. But usually the mood came
first, and ideological rationalization only after. On occasion this led
to the emergence of a systematic strategy of terrorism and to bitter
debates between proponents and opponents. But terrorism also took
place without precise doctrine and systematic strategy.8

The Post-World War II Wave

Terrorism did not disappear with the outbreak of World War II but flared
up regularly—from the anti-British bombings in the United Kingdom
by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) to political violence by both Jews
50 Terrorism
and Arabs in the British mandate of Palestine. For David Rapoport, the
“principal stimulus was a major war aim of the victorious allies in both
world wars: national self-determination. The ambivalence of colonial
powers about their own legitimacy made them ideal targets for a politics
of atrocity.”9 But it was the post-World War II era that experienced the
most powerful outburst of political violence “from below” in many parts
of the world, as people struggled for decolonization and national libera-
tion as well as for revolutionary social change.
Developments like the retreats of the British, French, Dutch, and
Americans from Aden, Cyprus, Palestine, Algeria, Indonesia, the
Philippines, and other places were often preceded and accompanied
by terrorist violence. In Latin America, the revolutionary ferment was
directed against American interference on behalf of the ruling class and
aimed at a new social order that challenged the capitalist model. In Africa
and Asia, European powers were the targets. Frantz Fanon and Regis
Debray provided the theoretical justifications for violent actions for the
sake of national liberation and fundamental social change. Using the case
of Algeria to indict the inhumanity of the Western model in general and
colonialism in particular, Fanon endorsed all-out violence not only as a
means to an end—national liberation—but also as an end in itself that
would free the liberated individuals from their marks of oppression and
empower them. In The Wretched of the Earth he wrote,

At the level of the individuals, violence is a cleansing force. It frees

the native from his inferiority complex and from his despair and
inaction; it makes him fearless and restores his self-respect.10

He also called for a new, just, and humane social and political model that
was applicable beyond the special cases of Algeria and Africa to the Third
World in general and to the struggle of minorities for self-determination
in the First World as well. As Fanon put it in the conclusion of his treatise,

Let us decide not to imitate Europe; let us combine our muscles and
our brains in a new direction. Let us create the whole man, whom
Europe has been incapable of bringing to triumphant birth.
Two centuries ago, a former European colony decided to catch up
with Europe. It succeeded so well that the United States of America
became a monster, in which the taints, the sickness, and the inhu-
manity of Europe have grown to appalling dimensions.
Comrades, have we not other work to do than to create a third
Europe?11

In Revolution in the Revolution, Debray provided the rationale for the

anti-imperialist, anticapitalist revolutionary uprisings in Latin America in
particular. Unlike Fanon, who recognized the usefulness of terrorist action,
Terrorism in the Global Context 51
Debray did not subscribe to the efficacy of terrorism but recommended
larger-scale guerrilla warfare.
Fanon (a native of Martinique) and Debray (a Frenchman) were
outsider theorists focusing on Africa and Latin America; the Brazilian
Communist Carlos Marighella was a homegrown Latin American rev-
olutionary whose “Handbook of Urban Guerrilla Warfare” provided
hands-on instructions for violent struggle “from below.” Besides physical
fitness and absolute dedication to the cause, Marighella recommended
technical expertise, especially with respect to arms, such as machine
guns, revolvers, shotguns, mortars, and bazookas. In one passage of his
manual, he gave the following advice:

A knowledge of various types of ammunition and explosives is

another aspect to consider. Among the explosives, dynamite must be
well understood. The use of incendiary bombs, of smoke bombs, and
other types is indispensable knowledge.
To know how to make and repair arms, prepare Molotov cock-
tails, grenades, mines, homemade destructive devices, how to blow
up bridges, tear up and put out of service rails and sleepers, these are
the requisites in the technical preparation of the urban guerrilla that
can never be considered unimportant.12

In the 1960s and 1970s in particular, Fanon, Debray, and Marighella, for
their theoretical contributions, and Ernesto “Che” Guevara, for his influ-
ence on and participation in Fidel Castro’s Cuban Revolution, affected
radicals far beyond the Third World. In Western Europe and, albeit to a
lesser extent, in the United States, breakaway groups from the New Left’s
student movements decided to fight the symbols of American imperialism
and the ruling establishments in their respective countries. Whether the
Red Army Faction (RAF), better known as the Baader-Meinhof group, in
Germany; the Red Brigades in Italy; or the Weather Underground in the
United States, members of these groups considered themselves Marxist
urban guerrillas fighting a class war against the existing order and its
capitalist arrangement.
Although providing the theoretical context for their violent deeds in
frequent communications, groups like the RAF insisted that it was time
for terrorist action, not just terrorist doctrine. In “Stadtguerrilla und
Klassenkampf” (“Urban Guerrilla and Class Struggle”), the RAF stated,
“In this stage of history nobody can deny that an armed group, how-
ever small it may be, has a better chance to grow into a people’s army
than a group that limits itself to proclaim revolutionary principles.”13
The authors of the RAF’s “Das Konzept Stadtguerrilla” (“The Concept
of Urban Guerrilla”) acknowledged that the idea of the urban guerrilla
originated in Latin America and that Marighella’s primer on the subject
was used as their model.
52 Terrorism
Although the RAF initially committed violence inside West Germany,
the group became part of a “terrorist international” that was responsible
for major terrorist acts abroad beginning in the mid-1970s. However, it
was not Ulrike Meinhof, Andreas Baader, and their German comrades,
but the PLO under Yassir Arafat’s leadership that pioneered interna-
tional cooperation among terrorists by instructing radicals from abroad
in training camps in Jordan. Among these early trainees were Baader and
Meinhof, who, upon their return to Germany, established the RAF. The
German trainees and their Palestinian hosts had parted on a sour note in
the late 1960s, but by the mid-1970s members of the RAF and its offshoots
teamed with their Palestinian colleagues to carry out terrorist attacks.
German leftists, inspired by Baader and Meinhof, and Palestinian
nationalists, motivated by the PLO’s Arafat and Abu Abbas, seemed
strange bedfellows at first sight. But there was a meeting of the minds in
that the Palestinians shared the RAF’s anti-American sentiments because
of the United States’ strong support for Israel.

1968: The Advent of Modern-Day Terrorism

Many students of terrorism consider 1968 as the beginning of modern-
day terrorism because this year marked the start of a period of ever more
spectacular terrorism dramas both internationally and domestically.
According to Jeffrey D. Simon,

The significant breaking point was the launching of a sustained

campaign of airline hijackings and sabotage by Palestinian guer-
rillas that was on a scale of violence and intensity never before
seen by the international community. The Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), under the command of a Palestinian
physician named George Habash, dramatically publicized its strug-
gle against Israel by hijacking an El Al plane in June 1968 on a
flight from Rome to Tel Aviv and diverting it to Algeria. Then, in
December, they attacked an El Al plane at the Athens airport, kill-
ing one passenger.14

From then on, the scope of the hijacking coups grew rapidly and soon
targeted Americans and U.S. interests abroad. Nothing illustrated this
better than the quadruple hijacking of four New York-bound airplanes
in September 1970 by members of the PFLP. While security guards
aboard the El Al plane overwhelmed this group of hijackers and killed
one of them, other terrorists forced a Trans World Airways plane, a Pan
American World Airways plane, and a Swissair jet to land in a remote
area of Jordan. Hundreds of passengers, most of them Americans, others
Europeans, were held hostage. Some of the hostages were released fairly
soon, but others were detained for about three weeks. Eventually, when
Terrorism in the Global Context 53
the United Kingdom, West Germany, and Switzerland agreed to release
Palestinian prisoners, all hostages were freed. These terrorist spectaculars
were designed to get the world to pay attention to the Palestinian cause.
Explaining this rationale, one of the Palestinians, Dr. Habash, said, “We
force people to ask what is going on.”15 Pointing to the massive publicity
in the wake of terrorist strikes, another Palestinian terrorist remarked,
“We would throw roses if it would work.”16
What was the cause that motivated these terrorists? Palestinian terror-
ism was and still is rooted in the fate of more than a million Palestinians
who fled or were displaced when the Jewish state of Israel was estab-
lished and by Israel’s territorial gains in the 1967 Six-Day War. The
result of Israel’s victory over the armies of Jordan, Syria, and Egypt was
the lasting occupation of the non-Israeli part of Palestine—the West Bank
and Gaza—and the Syrian Golan Heights. With the hope for a military
victory over Israel crushed, some Palestinians turned to international ter-
rorism in order to force governments and peoples outside the Middle
East to take notice of their plight.
By the time the Palestinian “Black September” group attacked and
brutally killed members of the Israeli Olympic team during the 1972
Olympic Games in Munich, the links between West Germany’s RAF and
its Palestinian counterparts were so close. It was therefore long assumed
that the RAF provided logistical support for the terror attack. But in
2012, a declassified police report about the Munich massacre revealed
that not the RAF but rather a Neo-Nazi cell assisted “Black September”
by providing weapons for the assault.17
In the following years, however, the RAF and Palestinians planned and
carried out numerous joint ventures, such as the terrorist attack during the
1975 OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) meet-
ing in Vienna; the 1976 hijacking of an El Al plane to Entebbe, Uganda;
and the 1977 hijacking of a Lufthansa plane to Mogadishu, Somalia.
Some leftist groups in Europe were more inwardly oriented and less
interested in and dependent on international cooperation. One commander
of the Italian Red Brigades, for example, revealed in the early 1990s,

Put simply and clearly, at the time [when the Red Brigades were still
a factor] our approach excluded any contacts with foreign groups
except contacts for materiel or those related to solidarity among
revolutionary movements. We had one contact with a Palestinian
faction for an arms shipment which we transported to our country
and shared with three other Italian armed groups. Besides this, we
adhered to the Maoist theory of “counting on one’s own strength,”
both for weapons and for money.18

But, as the same Red Brigades commander pointed out, the RAF consid-
ered itself and acted as “the European fifth column of an ‘Anti-imperialist
54 Terrorism
Front’” that reached into the Eastern Bloc and revolutionary movements
in the Third World.19 Not surprisingly, in the 1980s, German terrorists
tried to forge a Euro-terrorist alliance, an attempt that was inspired by
the example of their Palestinian friends. According to Bruce Hoffman,

The profound influence exercised by the Palestinians over the

Germans was perhaps never clearer than in 1985, when the RAF
joined forces with the French left-wing terrorist organization, Direct
Action (in French, Action Directe, thus AD), in hopes of creating a
PLO-like umbrella “anti-imperialist front of Western European guer-
rillas” that would include Italy’s Red Brigades (RB) and the Belgium
Communist Combatant Cells (CCC) as well.20

The ambitious plan did not succeed because many terrorists in various
Western European countries were arrested or forced to flee to safe havens
in the waning years of the Cold War. It has been argued that the RAF and
related organizations could not have survived as long as they did without
Palestinian support.21 But this argument ignores or minimizes the signifi-
cant support that these groups and individuals received from the Eastern
side of the Iron Curtain.
In fact, much of the terrorism that plagued the West during the 1970s
and 1980s related in one respect or another to the Cold War confron-
tation between the two superpowers and their respective spheres of
influence. And the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, too, was fought in this
context. While communist countries were supportive of leftist groups in
Europe, Latin America, and elsewhere, some governments with friendly
ties to Moscow supported religiously motivated groups as well. For
example, the Lebanese Hezbollah, which was created in 1982 and finan-
cially sustained by the Islamic Republic of Iran, was tolerated and at
times backed by Syria, which shared Hezbollah’s anti-Israeli stance.

Groups that Transcend the Average Life Span of Terrorist

Groups
David C. Rapoport has documented four waves of distinct terrorist
movements beginning with the anarchist wave in the late nineteenth cen-
tury, with an average span of forty to forty-five years for each of these
distinct periods. He concluded that this “pattern suggests a human life
cycle pattern, where dreams that inspire fathers lose their attractiveness
for the sons.”22 Many groups had, in fact, far shorter lives than the waves
they were part of. But there have also been some groups that survived the
demise of their particular waves and the average life span of these types
of groups.
A good example is the IRA, whose roots go back to the end of the
eighteenth century. The organization was founded in 1919 to fight for
Terrorism in the Global Context 55
Ireland’s independence from the United Kingdom. In 1921, when moder-
ate nationalists agreed to the establishment of an independent Irish state
in the predominantly Catholic south and to continued British control
over six counties in the north, radical nationalists opposed this solution.
They wanted all of Ireland to be independent. The result was a civil war
in which the extreme nationalists were defeated by the newly independ-
ent Irish state. Although the majority of the IRA denounced violence in
the late 1920s, remnants of the group continued to fight for Northern
Ireland’s independence. This was not the end of divisions within the IRA.
In 1969, after paramilitary Protestants brutally interfered with a peaceful
demonstration by Catholics in Northern Ireland, a militant IRA faction
broke away and took the name “Provisional IRA.” In the decades since
then, the Provisional IRA (also simply called the “IRA”) was most instru-
mental and most violent in pushing the nationalist cause in Northern
Ireland. At the same time, terrorism was also the weapon of choice of
Protestant Loyalist groups, such as the Ulster Defence Association and
the Ulster Vanguard Movement. In protest against a peace process that
resulted in the Belfast Agreement of 1998 and in the hope of ending the
violent conflict over the status of Northern Ireland once and for all, some
IRA members formed the Real IRA. In the following years, members
of this group carried out dozens of bombings and other terror attacks
in Northern Ireland, Dublin, London, Birmingham, and elsewhere. In
July 2005, the Provisional IRA declared an end to its armed struggle
and announced that the organization would work within the democratic
political process to achieve its goal. In the following three months, the
group decommissioned its arms under the supervision of an Independent
International Commission on Decommissioning. In May 2007, local gov-
ernment was restored to Northern Ireland when Ian Paisley, the leader
of the Democratic Unionists, and Martin McGuinness, the representative
of Sinn Fein, were sworn in as leader and deputy leader of the Northern
Ireland government in a power-sharing arrangement. And in February
2010, Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain and Prime Minister Brian
Cowen of Ireland signed the Hillsborough Castle Agreement for handing
over control of the six counties’ police and justice system to Northern
Ireland’s government. Splinter groups, such as the Real IRA and the 32
County Sovereignty Movement, do not accept the peace agreement and
continue to opt for violence to achieve their goals.23
Another example of an enduring terror organization is the Basque
ETA, the separatist movement that was founded in 1959 when the
wave of self-determination swept around the globe. Although Basques
received a great deal of autonomy in the decades following the end
of the Franco regime and the emergence of a democratic system, the
organization continued to demand a separate Basque state. While its
commandos always operated underground, the political party Batasuna
pursued the organization’s separatist goal in the legitimate political
56 Terrorism
process until banned as undemocratic by Spain’s Supreme Court. While
not close to a majority party, Batasuna managed to win around 10 and
15 percent of the Basque vote. More recently, though, a solid majority
of Basques rejects ETA outright. According to a November 2009 sur-
vey carried out by Euskobarometro of the Universidad del Pais Vasco,
63 percent of the Basque public rejected ETA totally while merely
1 percent supported the organization totally with a range of mixed views
in between. In spite of this lack in public support and the decimation of
its leadership during a wave of arrests both in Spain and in neighboring
France—especially in 2009 and 2010—the organization continued its
lethal violence throughout the first decade of the twenty-first century.
Since resorting to terrorism in the late 1960s, ETA attacks killed more
than 800 persons and injured many more. In the past, several cease-fire
agreements between ETA and the Madrid government did not last long
nor did unilateral truce announcements on the part of the group. Thus,
following ETA’s cease-fire message in March 2006, group members
detonated a powerful bomb in a parking garage at the Madrid airport,
killing two persons and causing the collapse of the building. In the sum-
mer of 2009, ETA celebrated its fiftieth birthday by detonating several
bombs on the popular resort island of Mallorca that is visited each sum-
mer by tens of thousands of tourists from abroad. ETA bombs exploded
in restaurants, in bars, and on streets killing two policemen and injuring
dozens of civilians. The obvious target was Spain’s all-important tour-
ism sector at a time of economic hardship.
Traditionally, Spanish ETA members sought and found safe haven
across the border in France in an area that Basque separatists consider
part of their homeland. But after French authorities suspected ETA oper-
atives to have had their hands in the killing of a French policeman in
March 2010, French President Nicolas Sarkozy promised to do away
with all ETA hideouts in France and hunt down ETA terrorists on French
soil. The killing of the policeman was in reaction to the arrest of ETA’s
military leader Ibon Gogeascoechea in February by French police. By
May 2010, his successor Mikel Kabikoitz Karrera Sarobe was in French
custody as well. The Spanish–French cooperation resulted in a crippling
blow against the resilient organization.
After announcing a unilateral and permanent cease-fire in 2012, ETA
claimed two years later that it had stored part of its weaponry beyond
its membership’s reach. But what was supposed a disarmament process
was too slow for the authorities. In mid-2015, Spanish and French police
raided an ETA weapons depot and seized fire arms and explosive mate-
rial. By 2017, ETA had completely disarmed and abandoned violence
although some longtime ETA hardliners did not accept peace.
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia or FARC, founded in
the 1960s, was one of the best-organized, best-trained, and best-financed
terrorist organizations that controlled part of Colombia’s territory, had
Terrorism in the Global Context 57
between 10,000 and 20,000 guerrilla fighters capable of challenging
the military, and participated in drug smuggling. Without ever coming
close to a takeover of the government, FARC leaders and foot-soldiers
eventually showed battle fatigue and a willingness to negotiate a peace
agreement. After a 2016 referendum rejected narrowly the proposed
peace treaty, the Colombian Congress approved a revised agreement. By
2017, the FARC ceased to exist as a terrorist guerrilla force and instead
established a political party—the Common Alternative Revolutionary
Force. However, while thousands of FARC fighters disarmed, a number
of factions continued their rebellion against the government and their
drug trafficking activities. In the spring of 2018, the “Oliver Sinisterra
Front,” led by a former FARC commander, killed three Ecuadorian jour-
nalists investigating a story in a border area known for the production of
coca and high crime rates.

The Decline of Left-Wing Terrorism

When the Cold War ended, many observers expected a dramatic decline
in international terrorism. In April 1992, the RAF announced that it was
laying down its arms. In a series of communiqués, the RAF admitted the
failure of its armed struggle up to the fall of the Berlin Wall and of its subse-
quent efforts to refocus its revolutionary activities in the wake of Germany’s
reunification. Even in defeat, the RAF reaffirmed its support for its past
actions and for active liberation movements around the world.24 Except for
some groups and cells in Greece, Spain, and Turkey most of the Marxist
groups that had terrorized Western Europe since the late 1960s vanished.
In Latin America, many terrorist groups along with similar groups
elsewhere disintegrated. Probably the best-known Latin American move-
ment, the Tupamaros, or National Liberation Movement, in Uruguay,
founded in 1962, became the model for urban terrorism or what pro-
ponents called “urban guerrilla warfare” across Latin America and
elsewhere. While they provided the dominant model for Marxist groups,
the Tupamaros also affected the organizational forms and terrorist meth-
ods of right-wing organizations. Aiming at overthrowing the existing
domestic order and establishing a fairer system, the mostly middle and
upper-class members of the Tupamaros established an effective terror
network across their country that fought foreign diplomats as well as
domestic police and military forces. Ultimately, however, the Tupamaros
lost their earlier public support and became the targets of an effective
counteroffensive by Uruguay’s security forces. By the 1980s, even before
the end of the Cold War, the organization, once the poster child for ter-
rorism, “totally abandoned the armed struggle, preferring instead to
re-enter democratic politics.”25
In sum, then, at the end turn of the century Marxist terrorists were no
longer the threat they had been in the preceding decades.
58 Terrorism

New Waves of Right and Left Violent Extremism

in the West
In the post-9/11 years, Europol and police authorities in EU
member states focused primarily on Jihadi extremists who were
responsible for the most lethal terrorist attacks, and secondarily
on right-wing violent extremism. More recently, there was a sig-
nificant increase in violent left-extremist groups, cells, and lone
wolves. While both right and left-wing extremists displayed char-
acteristics tied to the political realities in their particular countries,
they also exhibited similarities with and established actual links
to counterpart movements abroad. Thus, when Poland celebrated
the country’s Independence Day in November 2017, among the
60,000 White Supremacists gathering in Warsaw were individuals
and groups from across Europe. Similarly, when left-wing extrem-
ists turned the German city of Hamburg into a battlefield during
the G-20 summit in the summer of 2017, protesters came from all
over Europe.

Far-Right Violent Extremism

In January 2017 German police arrested a sixty-two-year-old
insurance salesman who subscribed to the violent ideology of the
“Reichsbuerger” movement, a carbon copy of the sovereign citi-
zens movement in the United States (see next chapter). His posts
on a Russian social media platform called for the annihilation of
Jews and Muslims. He and six comrades had plotted attacks on a
Jewish Center, a center for Muslim refugees, and on police officers.
When foiling the plot the police found an arsenal of weapons and
ammunition. The same year, a forty-nine-year-old German man,
a self-described “Reichsbuerger,” shot and killed a police officer.
The influx of refugees, most of them Muslims, in Western
Europe increased the support for right-wing parties and right
extreme hate groups. They all embraced and propagated national
pride and an aggressive defense of nativism. In Western European
countries the extreme right milieu was long populated by anti-
Semitic fanatics, Neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers. The words
and violent actions of White Supremacists targeted especially
Muslims, for example, in a campaign by the “Patriotic Europeans
Against the Islamization of the West,” a movement that originated
in Germany. The most extreme wings of the European versions
of the alt-right movement operated mostly in autonomous, small
cells following the leaderless resistance principle of America’s
White Supremacy/Neo-Nazi movement.
Terrorism in the Global Context 59
More often than not, violence was carried out by lone wolves
and did not strive to target large numbers of people. Also, in the
wake of the violence, there was often no claim of responsibility.
As one expert on terrorism and extremism explained, “Many
right-wing attacks might be self-explanatory (e.g., a bomb attack
against a synagogue or a mosque motivated by anti-Semitism or
Islamophobia) and can achieve the result of terrorizing the targeted
victim group even without any communication.”26
As far-right parties in a number of European countries (e.g.,
Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Hungary, France, Germany,
Italy) score electoral successes in the second decade of the twenty-
first century and nationalist rhetoric becomes part of the public
discourse, right extremists are becoming more numerous and
more violent.
In Australia, too, right-extremist groups that mirror old and
new movements in the United States and Europe were estab-
lished. Organizations, such as Blood and Honour, Southern Cross
Hammerskins, Women for Aryan Unity, and Australian Sovereign
Citizens, attracted followers; they targeted Asians and more recently
Muslims as well. According to experts, there was “a significant
shift in Australia’s right-wing movement towards a more extreme
far-right ideology and, in some instances, violence.”27

Far-Left Violent Extremism

In July 2017, as world leaders met at the G-20 summit in Hamburg,
Germany, the event itself was overshadowed by tens of thousands
of left-extreme protesters from across Germany and Europe. While
not all of the anticapitalists in the streets resorted to violence,
thousands of masked and black-clothed Antifa (for antifascist
movement) activists and Black Bloc anarchists used Molotov cock-
tails and iron rods to torch cars, smash store windows, and attack
police in the streets as well as police helicopters in the air by signal
flares and laser beams. More than 200 officers were injured and
more than 100 protesters arrested.
Since 2015 Europol reported sharp increases in left-wing vio-
lence. Individual European countries seconded that assessment. By
2016, for example, Germany’s police was aware of 28,500 left-
wing extremists, of whom 8,500 were considered violent. Italy,
Sweden, and Greece, along with Germany, seemed to harbor most
of them.
While there were many different left-extreme individuals,
cells, and groups, the greatest threat of violence came according

(continued)
60 Terrorism
(continued)
to police and intelligence agencies from Antifa extremists and
autonomous militants with mostly local concerns. All of these
groups shared hate and a rejection of capitalism and globalism.
Their targets were most often police and other public officials.
Germany’s Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, for exam-
ple, was the recipient of a letter bomb in 2017 for which the
left-extremist “Conspiracy of Fire Cell” claimed responsibility.
Antifa and autonomous radicals also targeted right-extremists for
violent clashes.
At the G-20 Summit in Hamburg, many thousands of protest-
ers marched under the banner of the antiglobalization network
ATTAC (Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions
and Aid to Citizens) signaling the transnational character of this
far-left movement. Whether they embraced the anarchist, Antifa, or
ATTAC label, left-extremists were increasingly active in Europe, in
North America (see next chapter), and Australia.

The Rise of Catastrophic Terrorism

Just as 1968 is considered the beginning of modern terrorism, 1995 can
be seen as the advent of catastrophic terrorism. There had been plenty
of warnings in advance. During the 1980s, some experts in the field cau-
tioned that the United States and the world should brace for the most
violent chapter in the history of terrorism. Robert Kupperman and Jeff
Kamen, for example, described eerie scenarios of major acts of terrorism
that would cause mass disruption and mass destruction. But other well-
regarded experts, Walter Laqueur among them, looked upon the terrorist
reality at that time as merely a nuisance for the United States and other
Western democracies. The events of the 1990s, starting with the first
World Trade Center bombing in 1993 and the Oklahoma City bombing
in 1995, proved the pessimists right. But it was the 1995 nerve gas attack
on subway riders in Tokyo, which killed a dozen and wounded more than
5,000 people, that became the definitive turning point. Addressing the
fact that members of the Aum Shinrikyo sect, who were responsible for
the incident in Japan, had been able to acquire and develop highly toxic
materials, U.S. Senator Sam Nunn identified the sarin gas strike as the
onset of “a new era” in terrorism with the possibility, if not likelihood, of
terrorists deploying weapons of mass destruction and committing cata-
strophic terror.28
Why did terrorism blossom in the post-Cold War era? Four develop-
ments in particular are relevant here:
Terrorism in the Global Context 61
1 The collapse of communism, the disintegration of the Soviet Union,
and the end of the bipolar world dismantled what one might call
a mechanism of restraint that had been part of the old balance-of-
power arrangement.
2 The dissolution of the Soviet Union into independent republics, the
disappearance of Soviet-style communism as an alternative ideol-
ogy, the changes in what had been the Eastern Bloc, and the new
geopolitical realities that cast the United States in the role of the
only remaining superpower unleashed ethnic, religious, and pseu-
doreligious fervor and led to the emergence and strengthening of
movements and groups that were willing to resort to catastrophic
terrorism for their purposes.
3 The growing opposition to certain aspects of modernity and globali-
zation was at least one factor in the emergence and radicalization of
religious and ethnic groups. These sentiments had found expression in
the rule of the Taliban in Afghanistan after the retreat of the Russian
troops. To be sure, other root causes existed as well. In the case of
Iran, it was the oppressive and U.S.-supported regime of the Shah that
the revolution overthrew.
4 The advances in communication technology allowed terrorist organi-
zations to dispatch their operatives to strike in distant places and to
exploit global communication nets and media for intragroup com-
munications and for the dissemination of their propaganda.

While I will address the first three developments here, the fourth point
concerning the drastic changes in the communication and media land-
scape will be covered extensively in Chapters 14 and 15.

Unrestrained Terrorism and Counterterrorism after the Cold War

In the early 1980s, journalist Claire Sterling pointed to state sponsors
of anti-American and anti-Western terrorism involving Soviet states in
Eastern Europe, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East.29 Details
about the insidious roles of East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria,
and other states in the Soviet orbit were only revealed after the collapse
of the Soviet Empire. But in a strange way, these relationships between
state supporters and terrorist groups provided also a safety valve against
catastrophic terrorism: The Soviet Union and its client states did not
want unrestrained terrorism that could have risked retaliation and per-
haps a superpower confrontation. Similarly, the United States supported
organizations that fought against socialist regimes with terrorist tactics,
such as the Contras in Nicaragua or the National Union for the Total
Independence of Angola (UNITA).
This bipolar geopolitical order limited also the likelihood of dispro-
portionate counterterrorist strikes by major Western target states, most
62 Terrorism
of all the United States. During the 444 days of the Iranian hostage crisis,
when dozens of American citizens were held hostage in the U.S. embassy
in Tehran with the blessing of the Iranian authorities, President Jimmy
Carter and his advisors discussed possible punitive military strikes against
Iran, if only to demonstrate American power and determination. But
once the Soviet Union had invaded Afghanistan, even Carter’s hawkish
National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, abandoned his push for
military actions because of fears that these measures “would simply give
additional opportunities to the Soviets in their drive toward the Persian
Gulf and the Indian Ocean.”30 And although Iran was seen in the West as
a far more flagrant sponsor of anti-American terrorism than Libya dur-
ing the 1980s, the Reagan administration chose Libya to demonstrate the
United States’ counterterrorist muscle—certainly in recognition that the
North African country was far less important in Moscow’s geopolitical
design than was Iran. To this end, the Reagan administration launched a
massive diplomatic and public relations campaign that branded Libya as
the “chief culprit” among the sponsors of anti-American terrorism.31 In
April 1986, Washington was able to blame Libya for the terrorist bomb-
ing of a disco in Berlin that was known to Libyan agents as the favorite
hangout for American GIs. The Reagan administration retaliated with
air strikes on Tripoli and Benghazi—but only after tipping off the Soviet
government in advance so that it could warn its advisors in Libya.
After the end of the Cold War, no such checks were in place. The
expected “New World Order” became more of a “New World Disorder”
with respect to terrorism. And counterterrorist considerations were no
longer harnessed as they were during the bipolar realities of the Cold
War period. This was clear after the terror attacks of September 11,
2001, when the United States launched extensive military actions against
Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan and even more so when Iraq
was invaded by U.S.-led forces. President George W. Bush and his advi-
sors did not have the balance-of-power/spheres-of-interest concerns of
earlier presidents, namely Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.

The Disintegration of the Communist Bloc

The dissolution of the communist bloc laid bare the deep-seated animosi-
ties in the territories it had spanned. The breakup of the Soviet Union
into more than a dozen independent countries did not end once and for
all the historic ethnic conflicts within and between these states. But it
was the rapid rise of Islamic militancy and radical teachings in the over-
whelmingly Muslim Central Asian republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan that destabilized the whole
region. Trained by Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan, and finan-
cially supported by governments and wealthy individuals in the Middle
East, Islamic radicals used terrorist methods to fight for the spread and
Terrorism in the Global Context 63
dominance of Islam. As one expert described these developments that
came after seven decades of Soviet rule,

The penetration of radical Islamic ideologies from Afghanistan,

Pakistan, Jordan, Egypt, and Turkey; the financing of mosques and
Islamic schools (madrassahs) by Iran and Saudi Arabia; and charities
that give money to Islamic schools and mosques have contributed to
the de-russification and Islamization of Central Asians.32

Similar developments took place in the Russian Federation itself, where

roughly one in six citizens was not a Russian, and in the ethnically and
religiously diverse Balkans. The Russian–Chechen conflict was and
still is a case in point. In the Chechen struggle for independence, the
weaker party resorted to terrorism against Russians inside and outside
the Chechen territory. For many observers, this was in response to the
brutality with which the Russian military prosecuted the war against
Chechen rebels. By taking over and occupying hospitals and other pub-
lic facilities, the Chechens staged dramatic hostage situations. Chechen
leaders threatened repeatedly that they would target the Moscow subway
system and nuclear power plants in Russia. Shortly before he was assassi-
nated in 1996, Andrei Dudayev, a Chechen separatist leader, threatened
even Western Europe with terrorism because, as he explained, Europeans
supported Russia’s aggression against Chechnya.
With the end of the Cold War, ethnic conflicts broke out in the
Balkans as well, most of all in Yugoslavia. And just as Muslim Chechen
separatists were supported by Muslim fighters from abroad, the Muslim
regions of the Balkans witnessed an influx of Muslim militants with
expertise in terrorism. This was most obvious in Bosnia, where Iranian
Revolutionary Guards and equally militant groups from a host of Arab
countries fought on the side of Bosnian Muslims during the bloody civil
war of the early 1990s. When the Dayton Peace Accord was signed, these
Muslim fighters did not leave the region as required by the agreement.
Instead, terrorism became an additional threat to American and other
NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) soldiers trying to keep
peace among the various factions. To be sure, Muslims from abroad
were not the first to promote terrorism at that time. In fact, Serbs were
the first party to actually perpetrate an act of international terrorism
in the Bosnian conflict, when they seized United Nations peacekeep-
ers as hostages in 1995 in order to prevent further NATO strikes. But
the bloody clash between Muslims and Serbs and, as Bosnian Muslims
felt, the West’s indifference to the genocide perpetrated against them
stirred anti-Western and anti-American sentiments far beyond the
Muslim communities in Bosnia. Sefir Halilovich, then commander of
the Bosnian Army, threatened at one point that terrorists would put
“European capitals ablaze” unless the West came to the aid of Bosnian
64 Terrorism
Muslims.33 His anger was shared by fellow Muslims all over Europe as
well as in Asia and Africa.
A large number of the fighters who helped their Muslim brethren in
Bosnia were veterans of the war in Afghanistan during most of the 1980s,
when they had fought side by side with Afghans against the Soviet mili-
tary after the latter invaded Afghanistan in 1979. Financed by oil-rich
Arab states, especially Saudi Arabia, the Arab mujahideen had forged
a close relationship with representatives of the U.S. government, who
supported them with sophisticated weapons. One of these Arab fighters
was Osama bin Laden, the offspring of a wealthy Saudi family, who had
found his calling in Afghanistan and in the jihad against the Soviet intrud-
ers. Once the Soviet forces had withdrawn, Washington had achieved
its goal and was no longer interested in Afghanistan and unwilling to
contribute to the reconstruction of the country. Realizing that they had
been Washington’s pawn in the Cold War, the one-time allies—many
mujahideens, Osama bin Laden among them—turned their ire against
the United States.

Modernization, Globalization, and the Proliferation

of Religious Violence
In the fall of 1999, a few hundred self-proclaimed anarchists disrupted a
summit meeting of the WTO in Seattle by detonating M-80 firecrackers
and vandalizing brand-name stores like Starbucks, Nike, and Old Navy.
Subsequent meetings of the WTO, the World Bank, the International
Monetary Fund, and other international organizations were plagued
by more serious antiglobalization violence. American and European
left-leaning environmentalists and opponents of Western-style indus-
trial modernization, postmodern developments, and U.S.-dominated
globalization and consumerism were and are the driving forces in the
antiglobalization movement. But the opposition to these developments
has proven strongest amongst all kinds of religious fundamentalists.
In his book Jihad vs. McWorld, Benjamin Barber examines the resent-
ment against the reach of mass production, mass consumption, mass
entertainment, and mass information that transcends national borders.
He characterizes the extreme reactions to these developments as “jihad.”34
But jihad (holy war) does not simply stand here for what fundamentalist
Muslims say and do to counter the McWorld universe and Hollywood-
dominated entertainment. Rather, in this context, jihad is a metaphor
for the extreme reactions of distinct groups that see their traditional reli-
gious, ethnic, political, and economic values under attack. To be sure, the
religious zealots of the Islamic State or Al Qaeda network would qualify
on the jihad side, but so would right-wing and left-wing extremists in the
United States and elsewhere in the West. Mark Juergensmeyer, an expert
on religious violence, comes to similar conclusions when he writes,
Terrorism in the Global Context 65
Activists such as bin Laden might be regarded as guerrilla antiglo-
balists . . . The era of globalization and postmodernity creates a
context in which authority is undercut and local forces have been
unleashed. I do not mean to imply that only globalization causes
religious violence. But it may be one reason why so many instances of
religious violence in such diverse places around the world are occur-
ring at the present time.35

Furthermore, Juergensmeyer points out that the “perception of an inter-

national conspiracy and an oppressive economic ‘new world order’ has
been explicitly mentioned by Osama bin Laden, the Aum Shinrikyo, and
Christian militia groups [in the United States].”36 But while antiglobaliza-
tion sentiments fueled the hate of all kinds of religious and ethnic groups,
the events of 9/11 and subsequent attacks drew most attention to Muslim
extremists who claimed to strike in the name of God and their religion.
Nobody justified violence in reaction to U.S. dominance in and exploita-
tion of Arab and Muslim countries as well as U.S. support for oppressive
regimes in the Middle East as categorically and frequently as Osama bin
Laden, the founder of Al Qaeda. In his 1996 fatwa, he wrote about the
predicament of Muslims in general and of Saudi Arabia in particular:

From here, today we begin the work, talking and discussing the ways
of correcting what had happened to the Islamic world in general,
and the land of the two Holy Places in particular. We wish to study
the means that we could follow to return the situation to its nor-
mal path. And to return to the people their own rights, particularly
after the large damages and the great aggression on the life and the
religion of the people. An injustice that had affected every section
and group of the people, the civilians, military and security men,
government officials and merchants, the young and the old people as
well as school and university students. Hundreds of thousands of the
unemployed graduates, who became the widest sections of society,
were also affected.37

Addressing the situation of Saudi Arabians, he complained,

More than three hundred forty billions of Riyal [are] owed by the
[Saudi] government to the people in addition to the daily accumulated
interest, let alone the foreign debt. People wonder whether we are the
largest oil exporting country?! They even believe that this situation is
a curse put on them by Allah for not objecting to the oppressive and
illegitimate behavior and measures of the ruling regime.38

He blamed the “American crusader forces” for a great deal of the cata-
strophic policies “imposed on the country [Saudi Arabia], especially in
66 Terrorism
the field of [the] oil industry where production is restricted or expanded
and prices are fixed to suit the American economy ignoring the economy
of the country [Saudi Arabia].”39
Years before the terror in New York and Washington, DC, politi-
cal scientist Samuel Huntington predicted that the greatest dangers in
the post-Cold War era would arise from conflicts between nations and
groups of different civilizations, of different cultural backgrounds.40
Several weeks after the events of 9/11, while rejecting the notion that these
attacks signaled such a collision, Huntington was sure that “bin Laden
wants it to be a clash of civilizations between Islam and the West.”41 Bin
Laden’s statements validated this conclusion all along. In his 1998 dec-
laration of war against “Jews and Crusaders,” he listed the wrongdoings
of the “Crusader–Zionist alliance” and reminded all Muslims that the
“jihad is an individual duty if the enemy destroys the Muslim countries”
and that “nothing is more sacred than belief except repulsing an enemy
who is attacking religion and life.” He then called on all Muslims “to kill
the Americans and their allies—civilians and military . . . in any country
in which it is possible to do.” In October 2001, when the U.S. military
commenced strikes against Al Qaeda camps and Taliban strongholds in
Afghanistan, bin Laden declared,

The events have divided the whole world into two sides. The side
of believers and the side of infidels, may God keep you away from
them. Every Muslim has to rush to make his religion victorious.
The winds of faith have come. The winds of change have come
to eradicate oppression from the island of Muhammad, peace be
upon him.42

Since Muslims did not rise in a massive united front to fight the Christian
and Jewish infidels in the holy war that bin Laden had declared, the Al
Qaeda leader and his supporters did not realize their most ambitious
objective. On the contrary, they lost their safe haven, headquarters,
training facilities, and weapon arsenals in Afghanistan. In this respect,
bin Laden and his comrades in arms underestimated, perhaps, the resolve
of the United States and the willingness of other governments to cooper-
ate with Washington. But one must also doubt that the Al Qaeda leader-
ship expected to provoke the existential clash of civilizations simply as
a result of the 9/11 operation and the anticipated military response. It
is far more likely that the plan was to move with each additional terror
attack closer toward a confrontation between “the side of believers” and
“the side of infidels.”
After bin Laden’s death and the further decline of Al Qaeda Central
the Islamic State embraced Al Qaeda’s ideology. Upon declaring himself
the Caliph of the Caliphate Islamic State, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, also
called Amirul-Mu’minin (Leader of the Faithful), said,
Terrorism in the Global Context 67
O Ummah of Islam, indeed the world today has been divided into
two camps and two trenches, with no third camp present: The camp
of Islam and faith, and the camp of kufr (disbelief) and hypocrisy –
the camp of the Muslims and the mujahidin everywhere, and the
camp of the Jews, the crusaders, their allies, and with them the rest
of the nations and religions of kufr, all being led by America and
Russia, and being mobilized by the Jews.43

Certainly, the events of 9/11, subsequent major terrorist attacks in the

West, and even more so ISIS-linked strikes in Europe, North America,
and Australia increased the tensions between Muslim minorities and
Christian majorities in many Western countries. Although they had sin-
gled out Muslim immigrants in the past because of their different cul-
tural and religious preferences, the xenophobic right in France, Austria,
Belgium, Denmark, Germany, the United States, and elsewhere became
far more popular when people feared that Muslims within their bor-
ders would commit violence. In this atmosphere, populist leaders made
Muslims the scapegoats for all kinds of ills in their societies.
As new antiterrorism laws and profiling criteria in Western democra-
cies targeted Muslims and Arabs in particular, the gap between Muslim
minorities and non-Muslim majorities widened. Although far from mov-
ing toward the cataclysmic clash of civilizations that Huntington had
warned of and bin Laden had wished for, there was certainly increased
hostility between “infidels” and “believers” in many Western countries.
David Rapoport has suggested that the current wave of religious ter-
rorism got its most important impulses from the Islamic revolution of
1979 in Iran and, a decade later, from the defeat of the Soviet Union
in Afghanistan. His point does not contradict the influence of antiglo-
balization and clash-of-civilization sentiments on the rise of religious
terrorism—especially of the Muslim variety. The Iranian revolution, too,
was at least partially a reaction to American and Western influence and
support of the regime of the Shah. Moreover, the developments in Iran
and later in Afghanistan “gave evidence that religion now provided more
hope than the prevailing revolutionary ethos did.”44 In both cases, for-
midable terror organizations emerged that had ties to the fundamentalist
Muslim regimes in Iran and Afghanistan: Hezbollah and Al Qaeda.
Founded in 1982 by Lebanese followers of Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini,
members of Hezbollah were trained in the Bekaa Valley by Iranian
Revolutionary Guards and otherwise supported by the government
in Tehran. This relationship was an important step forward for Iran,
because, as Adam Shatz concluded, “Hezbollah provided a means” for
Iran of “spread[ing] the Islamic revolution to the Arab world” and “gain-
ing a foothold in Middle East politics.”45 But besides fighting Israel and
the foreign military presence and influence in Lebanon, Hezbollah did not
have a grander anti-Western and antiglobalization design. Hezbollah’s
68 Terrorism
focus was on Lebanon and the Israeli–Palestinian problem—not on a
united Muslim front against the West.
As noted earlier, bin Laden, his associates, and his supporters were not
just opposed to Western-driven and U.S.-dominated globalization; they
also despised the regimes in the region that cooperated with the United
States and the West. Indeed, bin Laden expressed as much contempt for
Saudi Arabia’s rulers as for the U.S. government. When he returned from
Afghanistan to Saudi Arabia in 1990, he was offended by the presence
and influence of Westerners in his homeland. After the Saudi rulers and
other governments in the region supported the U.S.-led military coali-
tion against Iraq in the early 1990s, he was particularly disturbed by the
lasting presence of the U.S. military on the Arabian Peninsula. Bin Laden
turned so vehemently against Saudi Arabia’s government because of this
issue that he lost his citizenship.
After losing his Saudi passport bin Laden found a new base of oper-
ation in Sudan, also an Islamic republic. Here the group established
businesses and plotted violent actions against the United States and the
Saudi rulers. Under pressure from the United States, the Saudis, and other
countries in the region, the Sudanese government asked Al Qaeda to leave
the country. In the spring of 1996, accompanied by family members and
supporters, bin Laden flew to Afghanistan, where he found agreeable
surroundings. According to Simon Reeve,

He had chosen Afghanistan, where he knew he could rely on the

support of his old comrades [with whom he had fought against the
Soviet invaders of Afghanistan in the 1980s]. Many of them had
now reorganized into the fundamentalist Islamic militia known to
the West as the Taliban, which was imposing harsh Sharia law in
the country: forcing men into mosques at gunpoint five times a day,
banning music and alcohol, and preventing women from working.46

In this environment, cut off from what he considered the evils of

Western influence, bin Laden and his associates refined their doctrine
and trained “holy warriors” for the envisioned clash with the infidel
West. To advance this goal, Al Qaeda, like other terrorist organizations,
embraced modernity and globalization by using the latest communica-
tion technologies. The Islamic State or ISIS took this publicity concept
further than any other jihadist and non-jihadist group as will be detailed
in Chapters 14 and 15.
In the past, a neat distinction between international and domestic
terrorism was a useful tool for examining the complexities of the ter-
rorist phenomenon. But this differentiation is less meaningful today—if
only because the news about indigenous terrorism transcends national
borders. Take the Oklahoma City bombing, which at first sight seemed
utterly domestic in nature because Americans, Timothy McVeigh and his
Terrorism in the Global Context 69
accomplice Terry Nichols, struck in the American heartland against fel-
low Americans. Both men shared the ideas of White Supremacy/Christian
identity hate groups in the United States, which are seemingly an indig-
enous phenomenon. But the leaders of these groups and their followers
embrace international conspiracy theories and cultivate ties to similar
hate organizations abroad. Ingo Hasselbach, the founder of a Neo-Nazi
party in eastern Germany who eventually quit the hate group scene,
revealed the following after the Oklahoma City bombing,

Virtually all of our propaganda and training manuals came from the
right-wing extremist groups in Nebraska and California . . . We also
received illegal materials from our friends in Nebraska . . . like a U.S.
Army manual called Explosives and Demolitions, which has since
been copied and circulated (still with the top-secret stamp across the
title page) to thousands of right-wing extremists all over Europe.47

But although the boundaries between international and domestic ter-

rorism are blurred, different realities exist in different domestic set-
tings as the following chapter about terrorism in the American context
illustrates.

Notes
1 Jeffrey D. Simon, The Terrorist Trap: America’s Experience with Terrorism
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 27.
2 For the Sea Shepherd’s mission statement, see www.seashepherd.org/who-we-
are/, accessed June 1, 2010.
3 Raffi Khatchagourian, “Neptune’s Navy: Paul Watson’s Wild Crusade to
Save the Oceans,” New Yorker, November 5, 2007, www.newyorker.com/
reporting/2007/11/05/071105fa_fact_khatchadourian?currentPage=all,
accessed June 1, 2010.
4 The full Greenpeace statement is available at www.greenpeace.org/international/
en/about/history/paul-watson/, accessed June 5, 2010.
5 Heinzen’s treatise is reprinted in Walter Laqueur and Yonah Alexander, The
Terrorism Reader: The Essential Source Book on Political Violence Both Past
and Present (New York: Penguin Books, 1987), 59.
6 Ibid.
7 Walter Laqueur, A History of Terrorism (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction
Publishers, 2002), 14.
8 Ibid., 77.
9 David C. Rapoport, “The Fourth Wave: September 11 in the History of
Terrorism,” Current History (December 2001): 420.
10 Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove Weidenfeld,
1963), 94.
11 Ibid., 313.
12 From excerpts of Carlos Marighella, “Handbook of Urban Guerrilla Warfare,”
in Laqueur and Alexander, 163.
13 For “Stadtguerrilla und Klassenkampf” and other RAF documents, see www.
baadermeinhof.com.
14 Simon, 97–8.
70 Terrorism
15 Martha Crenshaw, “The Logic of Terrorism: Terrorist Behavior as a Product
of Rational Choice,” in Walter Reich, ed., Origins of Terrorism (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1990), 18.
16 Donna M. Schlagheck, International Terrorism (Lexington, MA: Lexington
Books, 1988), 69.
17 Gunter Latsch und Klaus Wiegrefe, “Files Reveal Neo-Nazis Helped Palestinian
Terrorists,” Der Spiegel, June 18, 2012, www.spiegel.de/international/germany/
files-show-neo-nazis-helped-palestinian-terrorists-in-munich-1972-massacre-
a-839467.html, accessed April 12, 2018.
18 Xavier Raufer, “The Red Brigades: Farewell to Arms,” Studies in Conflict and
Terrorism 16:4 (1993): 315–25.
19 Ibid., 323.
20 Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism (New York: Columbia University Press,
1998), 83.
21 Ibid., cites David Schiller, a German-Israeli counterterrorism analyst, who
argued that “without assistance provided by the Palestinians to their German
counterparts the latter could not have survived.”
22 David C. Rapoport, “The Four Waves of Rebel Terror and September 11,” 2,
www.anthropoetics.ucla.edu/ap0801/terror.htm.
23 Although denied by these groups, there seems some evidence that the 32
County Sovereignty Movement is the political arm of the Real IRA just as
Sinn Fein is the political arm of the IRA.
24 The communiqués of April and June 1992 are reprinted in the appendix of
Dennis A. Pluchinsky, “Germany’s Red Army Faction: An Obituary,” Studies
in Conflict and Terrorism 16:2 (1993): 135–57.
25 Peter Calvert, “Terrorism in Uruguay,” in Martha Crenshaw and John Pimlott,
eds., Encyclopedia of World Terrorism, vol. 2 (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe,
1997), 454.
26 Daniel Koehler, “Right-Wing Extremism and Terrorism in Europe: Current
Developments and Issues for the Future,” Prism 6:2 (July 2016), http://
cco.ndu.edu/Publications/PRISM/PRISM-Volume-6-no-2/Article/839011/
right-wing-extremism-and-terrorism-in-europe-current-developments-and-
issues-fo/, accessed February 1, 2018.
27 “Right-Wing Extremism on the rise,” SBS News, June 2, 2017, www.sbs.com.
au/news/right-wing-extremism-on-rise, accessed January 30, 2018.
28 Senator Nunn made the remarks during a Senate hearing. See Christopher
Drew, “Japanese Sect Tried to Buy U.S. Arms Technology,” New York Times,
October 31, 1995, 5.
29 Claire Sterling, The Terror Network (New York: Berkeley, 1982).
30 Zbigniew Brzezinski, Power and Principle (New York: Farrar, Straus and
Giroux, 1983), 489.
31 Ronald H. Hinckley, People, Polls, and Policy Makers: American Public
Opinion and National Security (New York: Lexington Books, 1992).
32 Rohan Gunaratna, “Central Asian Republics,” in Frank Shanty and Raymond
Picquet, eds., Encyclopedia of World Terrorism, 1996–2002 (Armonk, NY:
M. E. Sharpe, 2003), 357–61.
33 Magnus Ranstorp and Gus Xhudo, “A Threat to Europe? Middle East Ties
with the Balkans and Their Impact upon Terrorist Activity throughout the
Region,” Terrorism and Political Violence 6:2 (1994): 210.
34 Benjamin R. Barber, Jihad vs. McWorld (New York: Ballantine Books, 1996).
35 Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2000), xii.
36 Ibid.
Terrorism in the Global Context 71
37 Unless otherwise indicated, quotes from and references to bin Laden’s com-
munications are from his 1996 “Ladenese Epistle: Declaration of War” and
his 1998 “Jihad against Jews and Crusaders.” The documents are available on
a number of websites, among them www.washingtonpost.com.
38 Ibid.
39 Ibid.
40 Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World
Order (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996).
41 “Q&A: A Head-On Collision of Alien Cultures,” New York Times, October
20, 2001, A13.
42 “Text: bin Laden Statement,” www/guardian.co.uk/waronterror/story/0,1361,
565069,00html, accessed April 7, 2002.
43 According to the first issue of ISIS’s online magazine Dabiq, http://media.
clarionproject.org/files/09-2014/isis-isil-islamic-state-magazine-Issue-1-the-
return-of-khilafah.pdf, accessed July 22, 2015.
44 Rapoport, 421.
45 Adam Shatz, “In Search of Hezbollah,” New York Review of Books, April 29,
2004, 41.
46 Simon Reeve, The New Jackals (Boston: Northeastern University Press,
1999), 186.
47 Ingo Hasselbach, “Extremism: A Global Network,” New York Times, April
26, 1995.
4 Terrorism in the American
Context

On October 27, 2018, forty-six-year-old Robert Bowers entered the Tree

of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and immediately aimed
his assault rifle at parishioners who had gathered for Saturday service.
After killing eleven persons the shooter engaged with police and even-
tually surrendered. While receiving medical treatment he told a SWAT
officer, “All these Jews have to die!” The deadliest attack on a Jewish
community in U.S. history was planned and carried out by a homegrown
terrorist with a history of hateful anti-Semitic and anti-immigrant posts
in White Nationalist social media. Before he entered the synagogue he
posted a message that ended with, “I can’t sit by and watch my people
be slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in.” Obviously, these words
referred to a debate among White Nationalists over the pros and cons
of violent and nonviolent tactics in their “struggle” for White Christian
supremacy. Bowers decided to make a horrific “statement” in favor of
violence at a time when White Nationalism and anti-Semitic attacks were
already on the rise.
The United States has experienced different types of domestic terror-
ism, most of it being of either the right-wing or the left-wing variety. In
addition, there has been a hodgepodge of other kinds of terrorism in
the United States that has not fallen into either of these categories, for
example, political violence by exile groups aiming for regime change in
or national independence for their native countries (e.g., Cuban anti-
Castro militants or Croatian nationalists). This chapter provides an
overview of the various types of terrorist activities inside the United
States in the past and the present involving groups and individuals
who have resorted to violence themselves or who have encouraged
others to commit such acts, if only by dispersing messages of hate.
Because of the rise of political violence in the name of God in the latter
part of the twentieth and the early twenty-first century the following
Chapter 5 is fully devoted to “religious terrorism” with special atten-
tion to the jihadi variety that grew worldwide into the greatest and
most lethal threat.
Terrorism in the American Context 73
Right-Wing Terrorism
“Right wing” here refers to an ideology that is further right, and far
more extreme, than mainstream conservatism. Although groups that
are commonly lumped into this category have differed in their belief
systems, they share some common characteristics—namely, oppo-
sition to progress and to changes in political, economic, and social
arrangements. The contemporary right wing believes that the U.S.
constitutional system no longer reflects the design of the Founding
Fathers, that the federal government has taken too many rights away
from the states, and that the United Nations (UN) and other inter-
national entities control U.S. politics. Not all of these groups are
racist, as Martin Durham has pointed out, but most oppose equal
religious, ethnic, racial, and gender rights, which in their view upset
the old social, political, economic, and moral order of the white-
male-supremacy era.1 In the first decade of the twenty-first century,
right-wing extremism rose significantly in the United States. According
to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), at the end of 2009 there
were 932 known right-wing groups that promoted hate in words and
deeds against entire classes of people—over 50 percent more than in
2000.2 Following Barack Obama’s victory in the presidential election
of November 4, 2008, the Aryan Nations’ main website displayed a
tombstone with the inscription: “United States of America. Born: July 4,
1776. Died: Nov 4, 2008. Suicide.”
This notice of the demise of the United States on the day the nation
elected the first African American president in its history was followed
by rhetorical attacks on minorities and a call to arms for the coming civil
war as the following excerpts show:

Whitey is sick and tired of being the scapegoat for all the crimes of
racial violence in the United States.
Whitey is buying guns and ammunition at a record pace . . . no-
stop [sic] since the Marxist Communist Obama entered illegally (not
a U.S. confirmed citizen) into the White House, and WHITEY is
awakening to the Jews and their financial rip-off of the U.S. Treasury
(U.S. taxpayers) and the giving of such, to the JEW banks, lending
financial houses, and to the Jews themselves without having to dis-
close where and how such money went where!!
Civil war is already on this nation’s Southwestern border and
pushing up into Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona, as well into por-
tions of Texas. The United States will not see CIVIL WAR happen
at once across the country, but instead a gradual increase from
area to area.
Stay focused at all times. Be prepared at all times!
74 Terrorism
The Aryan Nations’ main site was taken down in 2010 but related web-
sites continued to display similar racist and threatening texts and images
throughout President Obama’s two terms—among them those propagan-
dizing the Aryan Nations’ agenda.3 While the number of right-extremist
groups declined to less than 800 by the end of 2014, this development
may have been “somewhat deceiving” since according to one account
“more than half of the decline in hate groups was of Ku Klux Klan chap-
ters, and many of those have apparently gone underground, ending pub-
lic communications, rather than disbanding.”4
By the end of 2017, the number of Ku Klux Klan (KKK) groups had
declined to a mere 72. But other groups flourished. The number of Neo-
Nazi groups, for example, grew by 22 percent from 99 in 2016 to 121
in 2017.5
These types of groups were in the past and remain today very similar
and fit easily under the larger umbrella of right-extremist movements in
the United States; there are, however, some differences in terms of their
history, longevity, and core beliefs.

The Ku Klux Klan

In the history of indigenous political violence in the United States, the
KKK has the distinction of being the most enduring organization—albeit
with periods of dormancy. Founded in 1865 to resist the consequences
of the Civil War and in particular the adoption of the Thirteenth
Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which abolished slavery and thus
slave labor, the KKK targeted black freedmen and whites supportive of
African Americans’ rights. Wearing white robes and masks, members of
the KKK terrorized by beating and lynching their targets under the cover
of night with the goal of upholding White Supremacy in the defeated
South. There is no doubt that the original Klan (as well as its successors
in the twentieth century) was a terrorist organization under the defini-
tion put forth in Chapter 2: Klan groups and individual members were
nonstate actors who committed violence against civilians for political
(and economic) ends. Within a few years, the Klan perpetrated thousands
of violent acts. In reaction, the federal government adopted laws that
made “nightriding” a crime and allowed the president to deploy troops
to end civil disturbances and even suspend habeas corpus for a time. As a
result, President Ulysses S. Grant moved troops into the South, and many
Klansmen were arrested. But by 1872, when the first KKK dissolved vol-
untarily, southern states began legislating measures that assured white
dominance and racial segregation. Even though segregation was achieved
and maintained by official policies in the South, white lynch mobs con-
tinued to kill many blacks.
The second KKK emerged after the release of D. W. Griffith’s motion
picture Birth of a Nation, which glorified the first Klan and the southern
Terrorism in the American Context 75
power structure and racial discrimination it stood for. At the peak of the
second Klan period in the mid-1920s, the organization had a total mem-
bership of 3–4 million. This forceful revival came about for other reasons
as well: (1) The perennial fear of southern whites that blacks could
finally achieve equality and challenge White Supremacy once again—
sentiments that were fueled by Birth of a Nation; (2) the uneasiness of
northern whites over black migration from the South to the North; and
(3) Protestant objections to immigration because many of the newcomers
were Catholics and Jews—groups that were hated by the Klan as well.
Moreover, newcomers were typically willing to work for lower wages
than the existing workforce and thus threatened the economic status quo
of the latter. All of these factors drove people in all parts of the country
into the arms of the Klan. By casting themselves as the protectors of
patriotism and moral values, the Klan recruited a large number of fun-
damentalist preachers—often by promising that the Klan would boost
attendance in their churches.
In the 1920s, the KKK foreshadowed the organizational structure of
more recent and contemporary terrorist organizations in that it worked
both within the legitimate political process and at the same time had
members who engaged in illegal political violence. As a powerful interest
group, the Klan influenced politics and policies on the local, state, and
federal levels and was especially successful in affecting election outcomes.
A day after the 1924 election, the New York Times reported under the
headline “Victories by Klan Feature Election: Order Elects Senators in
Oklahoma and Colorado, Governors in Kansas, Indiana, Colorado” that
“the candidates endorsed by the masked organization have apparently
scored sweeping victories in Indiana, Kansas, Colorado, and Oklahoma,
and later returns may add Montana to the list.”6 Moreover, the Klan
had its hand in splitting “the Democratic presidential convention, mainly
because the Catholic Al Smith was a strong contender.”7 During the
1924 campaign, Smith, the governor of New York, attacked the Klan
and President Calvin Coolidge, the Republican candidate, for keeping
mum about the organization. Reporting on one of Smith’s speeches, the
Times wrote,

The Governor vigorously assailed the Ku Klux Klan, not only char-
acterizing it as an unpatriotic and un-American organization, cre-
ated for the dissemination of hate and religious bigotry, but accusing
the Republican Party of using it for political capital and President
Coolidge of countenancing a policy of silence toward it.8

While the KKK made strides in working within the political system, the
organization did nothing to stop the violence committed by its members
in the southern states, where “Klansmen tarred and feathered, tortured,
and lynched blacks suspected of being involved with white women.
76 Terrorism
Prosperous African Americans and immigrants who jeopardized white
economic power found their businesses burned and their possessions
stolen.”9 But as the press reported extensively on the Klan’s terrorism and
states adopted “antimasking” laws, the opposition to the KKK strength-
ened. By the end of the 1920s, the organization was only a shadow of its
peak in 1924–1925 in that its membership declined from a record high
of 3–4 million to about 40,000.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s milestone rulings in favor of desegregation in
the 1950s (especially Brown v. Board of Education, 1954) and the activ-
ism of a strong civil rights movement in the early 1960s were met by yet
another revival of the KKK in the 1960s and a wave of political violence
against African Americans and whites who insisted on desegregation, the
free exercise of voting rights by blacks, and the end of all discrimination.
As James Ridgeway observed, the election of John F. Kennedy, the first
Catholic president, “revived the Klan’s old papist hatred, but that soon
gave way to a new sense of desperation and dread as Greyhound buses
filled with white and black kamikaze college students calling themselves
Freedom Riders descended upon the South.”10 The result was a reign of
terror by Klansmen against Freedom Riders and against southern blacks
and Jews. According to one account, “[The Klan] burned and bombed
houses and churches and synagogues. The Klan acted with relative
impunity. Its torchlight ceremonies and cross-burnings, attended by men
camouflaged in robes and hoods, gave it a powerful image.”11 Christopher
Hewitt found that from 1955, when this wave of violence began, to
1971, when it subsided, a total of 588 incidents were reported, with the
peak in a three-year period from 1963 through 1965.12 According to
opinion polls, only a tiny minority of Southerners had a positive view
of the Klan at the time, but the hate organization’s messages and deeds
played nevertheless into white Southerners’ support for segregation and
opposition to change. As Kenneth S. Stern concluded,

By encouraging that shared perception of the white populace, and by

scapegoating groups that seemed to threaten “the way things were,”
the Klan became an alternative social structure that gave many
people a feeling of power.13

Following the brutal murder of civil rights advocates in the South, the
FBI began to crack down on the Klan and eventually reduced this sort
of violence significantly. Infiltrated by FBI agents and informers, the
Klan either abandoned violence or risked swift indictments. In this
situation, Klan leaders split into factions, including one that insisted
on violent tactics and another in favor of a “mediagenic call to non-
violence.”14 But those who presented themselves and their organiza-
tion as nonviolent and legitimate players did not shed the tradition of
hate. Instead, underneath the more benign public image, the hard-core
Terrorism in the American Context 77
racism of the Klan remained intact. One of the leaders who typified
the change from an openly racist demeanor to a less threatening public
face was David Duke. Before he formed his own KKK organization in
the 1970s, Duke wrote,

The plain truth is our race is losing. We’re losing our schools to Black
savagery, losing our hard-earned pay to Black welfare, losing our
lives to No-Win-Red treason and Black crime, losing our culture to
Jewish and Black degeneracy, and we are losing our most precious
possession, our white racial heritage, to race-mixing.15

While recognizing the value of the soft sell as Grand Wizard of the Klan
and, even more so, as a member of the Louisiana state legislature, Duke’s
message never changed during his years as Klan leader and as founder of
his own hate organizations. In 2003, for example, the website of Duke’s
latest organizational vehicle, the European–American Unity and Rights
Organization (EURO), carried the following message: “Unless European-
Americans organize and act soon, America will become a ‘Third World’
country—that is, European-Americans will become outnumbered and
totally vulnerable to the political control of Blacks and other non-
Whites.”16 While a bit more carefully worded, the message was typical
of those in White Supremacy circles at the end of the twentieth and the
beginning of the twenty-first centuries, as were calls for “affirmative
action” on behalf of the white race and the constant drumbeat against
an alleged Jewish conspiracy for “supremacy” in the United States and
the world.
Although the Klan declined dramatically by the late 1980s and early
1990s, it did not completely disappear. In fact, new, aggressive KKK
groups were founded during this period. For example, according to the
Anti-Defamation League, the Church of the American Knights of the Ku
Klux Klan was formed in 1995 by Jeff Berry of Butler, Indiana, whose
organization followed

the traditional Klan model, with its crudely racist literature, its use of
vile epithets at public rallies and its combative stance. At an October
1998 rally in Jasper, Texas, Berry told the crowd, “We hate Jews. We
hate niggers . . . I’m a Yankee and I have never heard of thank you in
the nigger vocabulary . . . We don’t like you niggers . . . Tell me one
thing your race has accomplished.”17

In 2001, the SPLC identified 110 Klan groups across the country in
its list of hate organizations.18 But the declining trends since the begin-
ning of the decade was reversed in 2008, when Klan groups increased
significantly to 186 from 155 in 2007.19 Like other racist groups, Klan
organizations were poised to mobilize their membership and recruit new
78 Terrorism
members in the wake of President Obama’s election. This is what the
Imperial Wizard of the National Knights of the Ku Klux Klan posted on
its website: “America has been lost today and officially died November
4, 2008. To express protest, all members are requested to wear black
Armbands on January 20th and 21st, 2009, and if any of you do pos-
sess yankee flags, please fly them upside down. Fly the confederate flag.”
And there was also the invitation to “join the kkk [sic] today.”20 By the
end of 2017, there were only 72 official Klan chapters. As the SPLC
noted following the earlier decline,

Several Klan groups, notably the Fraternal White Knights of the Ku

Klux Klan and the Knight Riders of the Ku Klux Klan, disappeared
completely. It appeared that most of the groups simply faded as their
leaders and members got older, but it is also very possible that many
simply stopped announcing where their chapters were. A case in
point: Both the Traditionalist American Knights and the Mississippi
White Knights, which in 2013 each listed several klaverns, only listed
their headquarters chapters last year. At least two Klan groups had
earlier announced that they were no longer making their chapter lists
public. As with other groups, exposure of membership in the Klan
has cost at least some members their jobs, families or friends.21

The KKK was and remains only one among several so-called radical right-
wing movements in the United States. Jeffrey Kaplan identified the KKK,
Christian Identity groups, Neo-Nazi organizations, single-issue groups—
what he labeled “reconstructed traditions,” “idiosyncratic sectarians,”
and “the inchoate hope seeking a means of fulfillment (or less elegantly,
the young toughs or knuckle draggers of the movement)”—as major com-
ponents of the radical right wing. In fact, these groupings had, and still
have, far more similarities than differences.22 All of them subscribe to one
or another aspect of the so-called Christian Identity movement, especially
its insistence on the supremacy of the white race. Publicly, most of these
groups do not promote political violence, but by stirring the hate of their
followers and sympathizers against members of other races, religions, and
nationalities, indirectly they have encouraged terrorist acts.

Christian Identity and Neo-Nazi Groups

Christian Identity originated in nineteenth-century Great Britain as
“British Israelism” and over the years developed the most elaborate the-
ory of White Supremacy. At the heart of Christian Identity’s original
gospel is the claim that white Christians are the true Israelites of the Old
Testament and therefore God’s chosen people. When Christian Identity
made its way to the United States in the 1940s, it developed an even
more divisive and hateful pseudoreligious twist. British Identity teachings
Terrorism in the American Context 79
were clearly anti-Semitic, but American adherents added a distinct racist
element. As James Ridgeway described it, modern American Christian
Identity teaches in particular that

nonwhite races are “pre-Adamic”—that is, part of the creation fin-

ished before God created Adam and Eve. In this wisdom, they say,
God fashioned the subhuman nonwhites and sent them to live out-
side the Garden of Eden before the Fall. When Eve broke God’s origi-
nal commandment, she was implanted with two seeds. From Adam’s
seed sprang Abel and the white race. From the serpent Satan’s seed
came the lazy, wicked Cain. Angered, God cast Adam, Eve, and the
serpent out of the Garden of Eden and decreed eternal racial conflict.
Cain killed Abel, then ran off into the jungle to join the pre-Adamic
nonwhites. It is almost too neatly done: Identity theology provides
both a religious base for racism and anti-Semitism, and an ideologi-
cal rationale for violence against minorities and their white allies.23

For many years, the Church of Jesus Christ/Aryan Nations and its founder
and head, Richard Butler—Pastor Butler to his followers—were the cent-
ers of Christian Identity activity. Every year, adherents of Butler’s gospel
of hate as well as leaders and members of like-minded groups descended
on the Aryan Nations’ compound at Hayden Lake, Idaho, to participate
in survivalist training and indoctrination reinforcement. According to
Kaplan, Butler’s “Church” was also instrumental in the establishment of
the Aryan Brotherhood movement among white prisoners.24 There were
close contacts with members of the KKK, Neo-Nazi groups, and skin-
heads. Writing about the Aryan Nations, the Anti-Defamation League
characterized the hate organization as the “once most infamous Neo-
Nazi group in the United States”—a testament to the shared prejudices
of these groupings.25 As he advanced in age, Butler’s influence declined,
especially after he lost the Idaho compound in 2001 following legal
action by the victims of an assault by Butler’s guards. After his death in
2004, some of his followers tried to revitalize the Aryan Nations, oth-
ers established their own groups, such as the new Church of the Sons
of Yahweh. According to one observer of the radical right, “Factional
infighting . . . increased the risk of violence and even terrorism.”26 In
2009, former Butler associates tried to enlist support for the reestablish-
ment of a Butler-like group in Idaho and promised to revive their idol’s
annual national conventions.27 Although fragmenting further without
Butler and his “Church” as rallying mechanisms, Christian Identity ideas
remained alive and well in many of the most extreme right-wing hate
movements with violent tendencies.
For many years, a number of right-extremists switched from one
organization to another or founded their own group. Take, for example,
Tom Metzger, who was active in the KKK, ordained as a minister in
80 Terrorism
the Christian Identity milieu, and in 1983 founded his own organiza-
tion, White Aryan Resistance (WAR). Even after a jury returned a $12.5
million judgment against him and his son for inciting the murder of an
African immigrant by skinheads in 1990, Metzger continued to preach
hate of nonwhites in ways that were especially tailored to appeal to skin-
heads and prison inmates. Commenting on other racists’ reactions to the
events of 9/11, Metzger wrote in 2002,

“Recently the crazy idea of meeting and marching with non-white

mid easterners [sic] has been promoted by some right-wing racists.
Understanding their gripes is one thing. Tying our cause to theirs is
stupid and dangerous. Moslems are no less an enemy than the Jews.”28

Robert Mathews, who founded The Order in the early 1980s as an off-
shoot of Richard Butler’s Aryan Nations, was also closely aligned with
the Neo-Nazi organization National Alliance and its founder, William
Pierce. Mathews’s group was the most violent of the right-wing variety
in the 1980s. In 1984, members of the group killed Denver talk show
host Alan Berg, who had been very critical of White Supremacists on the
air. Later that year, Mathews was killed in a shoot-out with police in
the state of Washington. Even when it was assumed that The Order was
defunct, the group remained attractive as a right-wing model. In 1998,
law enforcement authorities discovered a plot to bomb the offices of the
Anti-Defamation League by a group that called itself The New Order and
modeled itself after Mathews’s original The Order.
William Pierce, once a physics professor, was a member of the
American Nazi Party before he founded his own organization, the
National Alliance, in 1974, and formulated an ideology as hateful as
that of his idol, Adolf Hitler. But it was especially his novel The Turner
Diaries (published under the pseudonym Andrew MacDonald) that
influenced a whole generation of extremists in radical right-wing circles,
from Christian Identity adherents to Neo-Nazis, Klansmen, militia, and
survivalist activists. The book describes a civil war in the United States in
which white Aryans fight what the author and other right-wing extrem-
ists call the Zionist Occupation Government (ZOG), killing blacks and
Jews indiscriminately. The dramatic highlights are the ruthless destruc-
tion of American cities to pave the way for the dream come true of a
white United States and a white world. Pierce died in 2002, but in spite
of bitter infighting over his succession, the National Alliance continued
its operations. Even before Pierce’s death, Kaplan wrote that the founder
of the National Alliance “will be best remembered” as the author of
“The Turner Diaries and perhaps its successor Hunter.”29 These books
continue to be popular among right-wing extremists. The Turner Diaries
served as a blueprint for Timothy McVeigh as he planned the bombing
of the Alfred Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995.
Terrorism in the American Context 81
According to Kaplan’s categories of radical right-wing groupings, the
Church of the Creator, also called World Church of the Creator, fits
what he calls “idiosyncratic sectarians.” Although denying the existence
of God and hostile to literally all religions, Creator had all the appear-
ances of a religious sect. The teachings of this group resembled the hateful
White Supremacy ideas of the Christian Identity movement. Led by a
young lawyer, Matthew Hale, who called himself Reverend and Pontifax
Maximus, the group utilized the Internet as a propaganda organ and
vehicle for recruitment.
Although the group did not openly call for violence against other
races, some of its members became terrorists. Thus, over the July Fourth
weekend in 1999, twenty-one-year-old Benjamin Nathaniel Smith went
on a killing spree, murdering two men and injuring nine others. As vic-
tims he sought out a group of Orthodox Jews, an African American,
and an Asian graduate student. As it turned out, Smith had been indoc-
trinated in the World Church of the Creator. Asked whether he felt
sorry for the victims of Smith’s shooting spree, the group’s leader, Hale,
answered that he did not and added, “We can have compassion for ani-
mals, but animals aren’t a threat to us. The blacks and the non-whites are
taking this country right from under us. We are becoming a niggerfied,
Jewified, Mongolfied country, and it’s disgusting. We have to stop it.”30
In these four short sentences, Hale, who has a law degree but was denied
admittance to the Illinois bar because of his racist views, summarized the
essence of his and other White Supremacists’ pseudoreligious agenda.
Smith expressed the same prejudices before he acted on his hateful senti-
ments. During an interview with a PBS station in Indiana, Smith said,
“The Jews and the blacks and all the mud races are trying to destroy our
people, and that is why we hate them.”31 Hale was convicted of trying to
solicit the murder of U.S. District Judge Joan Lefkow. The Chicago judge
had ordered Hale’s World Church of the Creator to change its name
because of a trademark violation. Hale’s bodyguard, who was supposed
to kill Judge Lefkow, turned out to be an undercover FBI informer. In
April 2005, Hale was sentenced to forty years in prison.

Right-Extremists Glorify Most Notorious Terrorists

On June 17, 2015, twenty-one-year-old Dylann Storm Roof
killed nine African Americans at the Emanuel African Methodist
Episcopalian Church in Charleston, South Carolina. The young
white man had entered the church, was welcomed by parishion-
ers, and sat quietly next to his eventual victims during their regular
Bible study. Once the meeting concluded, Roof got up, drew his
(continued)
82 Terrorism
(continued)
revolver, and shot his victims cold-blooded one by one. According
to a survivor, he said, “You rape our women and you’re taking
over our country. And you have to go.” The manifesto left behind
by Roof revealed that he was guided by racial hate as expressed
by White Supremacy organizations and Neo-Nazi groups on social
media and on websites. Police investigators found furthermore that
the killer had been in contact with other White Supremacists online
before he undertook his terrorist attack.
Two years later, in August 2017, well-armed Neo-Nazis, White
Supremacists, and militia groups assembled in Charlottesville,
Virginia, for a “Unite the Right” rally conceived by leaders in search
of a joint White Supremacy/Neo-Nazi movement that they promoted
as alternative right or “Alt-Right.” During a shouting match between
rally participants and counter-demonstrators one White Supremacist
screamed in the direction of African Americans, “Dylann Roof was
a hero . . . Go back to Africa!”
Similarly, more than two decades after Timothy McVeigh carried
out the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing that killed 168 children and
adults, the perpetrator of the most lethal act of terrorism before 9/11
became a hero in the right-extremist milieu. One well-known con-
tributor to the vicious Neo-Nazi website “Daily Stormer” suggested
in 2017 crowdfunding for the purpose of building a monument for
McVeigh.32 This sort of admiration for the Oklahoma City bomber
inspired several of McVeigh fans to commit violence themselves.
Thus, in May 2017, Jeremy Christian slashed the throats and killed
two men because they tried to protect two Muslim women from
Christian’s harassment on a commuter train in Oregon. “May
all the Gods bless Timothy McVeigh—a true patriot,” Christian
wrote in a Facebook post before the attack.33 Plots by several other
McVeigh fans were foiled.

The Patriot and Militia Movement

The Patriot Movement emerged after the end of the Cold War as another
version of perennial right-wing conspiracy theories made its rounds
through reactionary circles. The prospect of a “new world order” that
President George W. Bush and others lauded as the beginning of a peace-
ful era of international cooperation was seen by “true patriots” as proof
of Americans losing control of their own affairs. Newly formed para-
military groups were motivated by and spread conspiracy theories that
reported the sighting of UN or Russian tanks and helicopters and of UN
Terrorism in the American Context 83
storm troopers or American GIs under UN command. In response, citizen
militias prepared themselves to defend the U.S. Constitution against what
they perceived to be no longer a sovereign federal government. The move-
ment took off in response to the apparent liberal policies of President Bill
Clinton that allegedly threatened the Second Amendment’s right to bear
arms guarantee and other civil liberties. Violent clashes of federal agents
with a White Supremacist family at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and with the
Branch Davidian sect at Waco, Texas, strengthened the movement fur-
ther. After the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, the movement gained
national attention because the perpetrator, Timothy McVeigh, had
moved in the militia/patriot milieu as he conceived of and planned the
catastrophic bombing. But after gaining a great deal of publicity in the
wake of the Oklahoma City bombing, the movement weakened some-
what in the late 1990s and during the presidency of George W. Bush.
The election of Barack Obama, a Democrat and the first African
American president in U.S. history, triggered a revival of patriot and mili-
tia groups as well as other types of right-extremists—all on the same page
in their insistence on the original content and intent of the Constitution
and their right and obligation to protect the constitutional rights of their
communities from the evils of the federal government and those of “infe-
rior” race, ethnicity, and non-Christian religious beliefs. Add to this a
strong discontent and anger over the impact of a major economic crisis,
the changing demographics of the nation, and a perceived do-nothing
attitude of the ruling political elite. A gathering of extreme right-wing
representatives on Jekyll Island in Georgia a few months after Obama’s
inauguration “warned of ‘increasing national instability,’ worried about a
coming ‘New World Order,’ denounced secret schemes to merge Canada,
Mexico and the United States, and furiously attacked the new president’s
‘socialized’ policies and failure to end illegal immigration.”34 According
to one observer of the extreme-right scene, “this remarkable gathering
appears to have played a key role in launching the current resurgence
of militias and the larger antigovernment ‘Patriot’ movement.”35 Other
conspiracy theories claimed that the federal government had established
an elaborate surveillance network to spy on citizens and a multitude of
concentration camps inside U.S. borders for the coming imprisonment
of dissidents—especially leading members within the Patriot Movement.
When affected by such conspiracy theories, some persons resorted to
violence. A 2009 intelligence assessment of the Department of Homeland
Security mentioned the killing of three police officers in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, in April of that year. The gunman’s actions were reportedly
guided by his racist ideology and his belief in antigovernment conspiracy
theories about alleged gun confiscation, citizen detention camps, and a
Jewish-controlled “one world government.”36
The extreme-right’s list of “un-American” threats to individual free-
dom has always targeted the federal government and its agents, Jews and
84 Terrorism
Jewish organizations, racial minorities, immigrants, abortion providers,
and gays and lesbians.
Traditionally, the news media describe violence by right-wing extrem-
ists as hate crimes rather than terrorism but it would be more precise
to use the “T”-word in these cases since right-extremists have clearly
defined political grievances that they consider as motives and justifica-
tion for violent deeds. For example, antiabortion fanatics attacked and
frequently killed and maimed abortion providers because they opposed
legalized abortion and failed in their efforts to have the Roe v. Wade
ruling overturned; anti-immigration extremists targeted immigrants
because they believe that the government does not secure U.S. borders
and fails to enact effective (anti) immigration reforms; and antitax mili-
tants struck against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) because they
oppose government-imposed taxes.
Apropos antitax violence or, yes, antitax terrorism, in the last twenty
years, there have been at least four cases in which antigovernment extrem-
ists of the right-wing variety plotted violent attacks against the IRS and
its agents. In one case, five men set fire to an IRS office in Colorado
Springs. The incident on May 3, 1997, caused $2.5 million in damages
and injured one firefighter. The most spectacular attack occurred on
February 18, 2010, when Joseph Andrew Stack crashed his Piper Dakota
into the IRS office building in Austin, Texas, killing himself and an IRS
employee. In a so-called manifesto that he posted on his website, the
perpetrator described his long-running disputes with the IRS as motive
for his suicide mission. He ended his note with the sentences: “The com-
munist creed: From each according to his ability, to each according to
his need. The capitalist creed: From each according to his gullibility, to
each according to his greed.” This was reason enough for some conserva-
tive voices to label Stack a leftist terrorist. While nobody knows for sure
what Stack’s ideological preferences were, his rage against the IRS and
government in general was very much in tune with right-extreme antitax
and antigovernment extremists—although not incompatible with left-
extreme anarchists either.
It is striking that Americans, at least since 9/11, have been preoccu-
pied with terrorism carried out by Al Qaeda and like-minded groups
or individuals and far less aware of political violence perpetrated by
members of the right-extremist movement or those influenced by their
widely publicized ideology of hate. From 2008 through 2017 domestic
extremists were responsible for 384 killings, of which 274 or 71 per-
cent were carried out by right-extremists of one kind or the other—of
late characterized as members of the Alt-Right movement. In some years
right-extremists and in other years jihadis caused the largest number of
fatalities. Thus, in 2016 jihadists were responsible for 69 percent of all
terrorism victims; in 2017, a range of Alt-Right extremists caused 59 per-
cent of all fatalities. Whereas terrorists inspired by ISIS, Al Qaeda, and
Terrorism in the American Context 85
like-minded groups tend to stage a few spectacular attacks with a large
number of victims, such as the Orlando nightclub and the San Bernardino
mass shootings, right-extremists tend to carry out more attacks, typically
causing a smaller number of fatalities.37
Black Nationalists were responsible for 11 percent of the deaths
caused by domestic terrorists in 2017 and 15 percent in 2016. Among
the most deadly attacks were the 2016 killings of eight police offic-
ers in Dallas, Texas, and Baton Rouge, Louisiana.38 The twenty-first
century witnessed a proliferation of Black Nationalism. Between 2000
and 2016 the number of Black Nationalist groups increased from 48 to
193. The most dramatic expansion occurred on the heels of several inci-
dents in which police officers shot and killed young African American
males. As the SPLC concluded, “Although not necessarily violent them-
selves, groups such as the Nation of Islam (NOI), New Black Panther
Party (NBPP), New Black Panther Nation (NBPN), and the Five-Percent
Nation attract violent individuals whom they indoctrinate and push
toward extremism.”39

The Sovereign Citizens Movement

In our time, those who identify with the sovereign citizens movement
and in fact consider themselves as sovereign citizens constitute the most
extremist antigovernment faction in the United States. Adherents reside
typically in the South and Middle West, but they do not consider them-
selves citizens of the United States of America but rather “sovereign”
from any authority of the U.S. government. As a result, they refuse, for
example, to pay taxes, get licenses issued by motor vehicle offices, answer
to law enforcement and court orders or inquiries, or apply for social
security cards.
According to the FBI, self-declared “sovereign citizens,” whether
groups, cells, or lone wolves, have perpetrated all kinds of illegal actions,
among them:

•• Murder and physical assault;

•• Threats against judges, law enforcement professionals, and govern-
ment personnel;
•• Impersonation of police officers and diplomats;
•• Use of fake currency, passports, license plates, and driver’s licenses;
•• Engineering of various white-collar scams, including mortgage fraud
and so-called “redemption” schemes.40

The sovereign citizens movement originated in the 1970s and 1980s

in the Middle West of the country embracing the antigovernment pre-
cepts of Posse Comitatus fanatics. Originally racist and anti-Semitic,
the loosely connected local sovereign citizens of today include African
86 Terrorism
Americans who seem unfamiliar with the White Supremacy credo of the
original sovereigns.
In June 2015, the Police Chief magazine, the official publication of
the International Association of Chiefs of Police, published an article on
the growing sovereign citizens movement noting in a side bar that most
self-proclaimed citizens are peaceful. The lead paragraph described the
following incident that ended indeed peacefully,

In August 2012, a police officer in Las Vegas stopped a truck for paper
license plates that read simply, “Department of Transportation.”
During the contact, the woman driving stated repeatedly, “I am not
under contract with you” and would not provide a driver’s license,
vehicle registration, or proof of insurance. As the officer politely
pressed for the documentation required for her to drive legally in
Nevada, the woman called someone on the phone and requested spe-
cific directions from a male voice at the other end. Through records
checks, the officer learned that the truck was in fact properly regis-
tered and the woman was properly licensed, but she refused to give
those items to the officer. The stop ended peacefully when the officer
ticketed the woman for not surrendering her documentation, but
encounters with sovereign citizens do not always end so well.41

The article’s author mentioned, too, that some sovereign citizens are very
dangerous, noting that their online forums refer to their rights to defend
their views with violence in encounters with the police. “The tragic murders
of two Saint John Parish Louisiana Deputies in August 2012 and two West
Memphis, Arkansas, Police Officers in May 2010 give testimony to the dan-
gers some sovereigns pose,” the author, a captain in the Nevada Department
of Public Safety/Nevada Highway Patrol, warned his colleagues. “Since the
year 2000, at least six officers have been killed by known sovereigns.”42
In a 2014 survey of 382 law enforcement agencies, antigovernment
extremism was identified as a major terrorist threat. According to the
survey report, “An officer from a large metropolitan area said that ‘mili-
tias, neo-Nazis and sovereign citizens’ are the biggest threat we face in
regard to extremism.” Another respondent

“explained that he ranked the right-wing threat higher because ‘it is

an emerging threat that we don’t have as good of a grip on, even with
our intelligence unit, as we do with the Al Shabab/Al Qaeda issue,
which we have been dealing with for some time.’”43

Mostly, sovereign citizens commit paper terrorism and their most potent
attack mode is the filing of liens against the property of individuals they
want to hurt financially. According to one report, “The removal of a lien is
a complicated process that often takes the work of attorneys, and a year or
Terrorism in the American Context 87
more before it is successfully discharged, and can ruin someone’s credit in
the interim. Some victims have gone bankrupt as a result of these actions.”44
Sovereign citizens also file what comes down to bogus suits against public
officials whose actions they oppose. For example, in a typical case of paper
terrorism an employee in Idaho’s transportation department was sued for
$6 million when he refused to reinstate the license for an uninsured vehi-
cle. The same person sued a prosecutor and county clerk for $1.4 million.45

Left-Wing Terrorism
Just as certain aspects of right-wing ideologies and causes changed over
time, the belief systems of left-wing groups did as well. But they have
always stood for fundamental changes in the existing political, economic,
and social arrangements—whether in a monarchy or a democracy—by
violent means, if needed. In more recent times, these groups have resorted
to violence in opposition to globalization, which they consider another
form of exploiting less developed countries—economic imperialism. Like
the mainstream left, the extremists insist on de facto, not only legal,
equality (e.g., race, ethnic, and gender equality)—by affirmative action, if
needed. The left-wing groups in the United States that turned to terrorism
in the 1960s and 1970s as a result of the Vietnam War and the civil rights
struggles were inspired by Marxist ideology, but at the beginning of the
twenty-first century, these kinds of “extreme-left” terrorist groups did
not exist in the United States. However, there was a revival and strength-
ening of a far-left, antifascist or Antifa movement in response to Donald
Trump’s candidacy for the U.S. presidency and his victory.

The First Anarchists in the United States

On September 6, 1901, while visiting the Pan-American Exposition in
Buffalo, New York, President William McKinley was shot by an assassin
and so severely wounded that he died soon thereafter. The perpetrator
was caught at the scene of the attack and identified as Leon Czolgosz of
Cleveland, a self-described anarchist and disciple of Emma Goldman,
whose writings and speeches were well known in anarchist circles
and who Czolgosz had met once. Although Goldman was arrested in
Chicago as a suspected accomplice, she was soon released and never
charged. However, John Most, the founder of the anarchist newspaper
Freiheit, was charged and convicted for publishing an anarchist article
and thereby committing “an act endangering the peace and outraging
public decency.”46 The article was a reprint of Karl Heinzen’s fifty-
year-old essay “Murder,” which justified terrorism and had appeared
in the September 7 issue of the Freiheit—just one day after Czolgosz
shot the president. Although the defense claimed that no copy had been
sold, the judge ruled against Most and stated in his opinion,
88 Terrorism
It is in the power of words that is the potent force to commit crimes
and offenses in certain cases. No more striking illustration of the
criminal power of words could be given, if we are to believe the mur-
derer of our President, than that event presents. The assassin declares
that he was instigated and stimulated to consummate his foul deed
by the teachings of Emma Goldman.
It is impossible to read the whole article [authored by Heinzen]
without assuming that his doctrine claims that all rulers are enemies
of mankind, and are to be hunted and destroyed through “blood and
iron, poison and dynamite.”
It [the article] shows a deliberate intent to inculcate and promul-
gate the doctrine of the article. This we hold to be a criminal act.47

This was a remarkable ruling in that it made a direct connection between

inflammatory words and illegal actions. Years before McKinley’s vio-
lent death, Most and Goldman had coauthored an article that gave a
nod of approval to violence; they wrote, “It cannot and it shall not be
denied that most Anarchists feel convinced that ‘violence’ is not any more
reprehensible toward carrying out their designs than it is when used by
an oppressed people to obtain freedom.”48 However, after McKinley’s
death, Goldman insisted that “Anarchy did not teach men to do the act
for which Czolgosz is under arrest.”49
In the decades preceding McKinley’s assassination, labor union
members were involved in violent clashes with plant managers over
wages and working conditions. In many of these bitter conflicts, mine
operators and foremen were killed by workers and workers were mur-
dered by company-hired guards and soldiers. The Molly Maguires,
allegedly an Irish terrorist group, fought employers during bitter
disputes in the coal mines of Pennsylvania. At times, anarchists got
involved in this kind of violence. In 1892, for example, Alexander
Berkman, a young anarchist, attempted to kill Henry C. Frick of the
Carnegie Company because of Frick’s position on striking workers.
Berkman’s deed divided the anarchist movement in that “[John] Most,
in Freiheit, denounced him, while Emma Goldman in the Anarchist
came to his defense.”50
Although anarchists were far from popular before President McKinley’s
death, they became the targets of public outrage, threats, and violence
afterward. In this climate, “Mobs forced dozens of anarchists to flee their
homes and tried to wreck, in one case successfully, the offices of anar-
chist publications. Without warrants the police arrested scores, perhaps
hundreds.”51 The “war on anarchists” continued for years. During this
period, President Theodore Roosevelt ordered the establishment of a fed-
eral detective agency that became the forerunner of the FBI. Roosevelt
pressed for increasingly tough measures in the fight against the anarchist
danger. Addressing both chambers of Congress in 1908, he said,
Terrorism in the American Context 89
When compared with the suppression of anarchy, every other ques-
tion sinks into insignificance. The anarchist is the enemy of humanity,
the enemy of all mankind, and his is a deeper degree of criminality
than any other. No immigrant is allowed to our shores if he is an
anarchist, and no paper published here or abroad should be permit-
ted circulation in this country if it propagates anarchist propaganda.52

Given these strong sentiments, anarchists were suspected and accused of

violent deeds they had not committed. Thus, in 1910, when dynamite
exploded in the building of the Los Angeles Times, killing twenty-one
unorganized workers, newspaper owner Harrison Otis published an edi-
torial that blamed “anarchist scum” for the act of terrorism.53 Eventually,
John McNamara, a labor union official, and his brother James were
indicted, tried, and sentenced for the bombing of the Times.
In the United States, as Jeffrey D. Simon concluded, “The anarchist
movement failed to achieve its goal of uprisings and revolution.”54

Modern-Day Anarchists as Part of the Antifa Movement

In the summer of 2017, White Supremacists and Neo-Nazis marched in
Charlottesville, Virginia, to demonstrate publicly unity in the extreme
Alt-Right movement; they shouted provoking slogans. However, even the
most offensive racist (“Go back to Africa”) and anti-Semitic (“Jews will
not replace us!”) shouts were overshadowed by violent clashes between
those White nationalists carrying fire arms and a cadre of Antifa leftists
who used sticks, chemical sprays, and balloons filled with paint or ink
as weapons.
After the police declared the rally “an unlawful assembly” and both
sides dispersed, twenty-year-old right-extremist James Alex Fields Jr.
from Ohio drove his Dodge Challenger at high speed into a crowd of
counter-protesters in an obvious case of car-ramming. As he reversed his
car, more pedestrians were hit. Thirty-two-year-old Heather Heyer, who
like other Charlottesville residents wanted to express her opposition to
the rally, was killed; nineteen persons suffered injuries.
Few Americans who saw TV reports about the violent scenes in
Charlottesville knew about the Antifa movement’s American roots.
Like typically small, autonomous, antifascist groups around the world
the U.S. adherents believe that fascism must be fought before it defeats
democracy. They are convinced that small, determined groups of activ-
ists could have easily prevented the growth of the Mussolini and Hitler
movements and parties early on. From the late 1980s through the early
2000s, local antifascist groups fought White Supremacist and Neo-Nazis
under the banner of Anti-Racist Action (ARA). Typically, group mem-
bers would interrupt White Power Rock or other events staged by racist/
White Supremacist organizations.
90 Terrorism
But, as Mark Bray, a student of the Antifa movement notes, the death of
William Pierce, founder and leader of the National Alliance organization,
and the imprisonment of Matt Hale, the leader of the World Church of the
Creator, contributed to the ARA’s passing “through a relative lull from the
middle of the 2000s up until perhaps the start of the Trump campaign.”55
During the campaign, ARA and AFA (antifascist action) activists inter-
rupted Trump’s campaign rallies. A Trump speech planned at the University
of Illinois in Chicago had to be canceled because antifascists successfully
promoted the infiltration of the audience with the result of fist fights and
shouting matches between the pro- and anti-Trump sides. Violent black
blocs, typical for anarchist activists, caused injuries and property damages
during the celebrations surrounding President Trump’s inauguration.
Many antifascists are anarchists, and others are radical leftists
advocating for local justice, often on the side of what they perceive as
disadvantaged minorities. Most of them are nonviolent but others seek
violent encounters.

The Weather Underground

It was not until the 1960s and 1970s that leftists in the United States
once again embraced terrorist methods to further their political ends.
Just like the groups in Latin America, Europe, and Asia, mostly young
Americans organized, as they explained, to bring about revolution and
the defeat of imperialism. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth cen-
turies, the original anarchists and social reformers in the United States
were long on terrorist theory and short on actual violence, and to the
extent that terrorism was traced to anarchism, the perpetrators were
typically individuals not directly associated with organized groups. In
sharp contrast, the self-declared revolutionary groups of the 1960s and
1970s practiced what they preached. The Weathermen, later renamed
the Weather Underground to signify the prominent roles of women in
the organization, was the best known among the white terrorist groups
of this era. An offshoot of the radical new left organization Students for
a Democratic Society, the founders took their name and the title of their
first manifesto, “You don’t need a weatherman to tell you which way
the wind blows,” from the lyrics of a Bob Dylan song. Their radicalism
was fueled by opposition to the Vietnam War and to racial and social
inequality in the United States. Shortly after organizing themselves in
early 1969, the Weathermen began a campaign of agitation in Chicago
during what they called “Days of Rage,” causing riots and clashes with
the police. By 1970, disappointed that they had been unsuccessful in
winning over the working class to their cause, the core of the group went
underground as a revolutionary vanguard and began a terrorist cam-
paign against public and private institutional cornerstones of the existing
political and economic order. The Pentagon and other military symbols,
Terrorism in the American Context 91
police facilities, banks, and multinational corporations were the particu-
lar targets. In the 1974 manifesto “Prairie Fire,” the last communication
by the group, the Weather Underground claimed responsibility for nine-
teen major acts of terrorism and warned of more violence. Missing from
the detailed list was an explosion in a Greenwich Village townhouse in
March 1970 in which three members of the group blew themselves up as
they were constructing a bomb.
Soon thereafter, the Weather Underground broke apart; some members
joined or established new groups, and others surrendered after a time to the
authorities and were tried and sentenced. Unlike their European soul mates,
the Weather Underground never managed to terrorize the whole coun-
try by spreading massive fear and anxiety. Concluding that the Weather
Underground was a failure, Ehud Sprinzak noted that the group had “never
more than four hundred members and followers, and most of the time its
inexperienced leaders and recruits worried not about the revolution but
about their hideouts, survival logistics, and internal group relations.”56
In “Prairie Fire,” the Weather Underground expressed its admiration
for black revolutionary groups, noting that the

“Black Liberation Army—fighting for three years under ruth-

less attack by the state—the fighters in prison, and recently the
Symbionese Liberation Army are leading forces in the development
of the armed struggle and political consciousness, respected by our-
selves and other revolutionaries.”57

Eventually, some members of the Weather Underground plotted joint

terrorism ventures with the Black Liberation Army and similar groups.
In the fall of 1981, a group of heavily armed men and women in dark ski
masks ambushed a Brink’s armored car in a shopping mall in Rockland
County, New York, near New York City, killing one of the guards and
injuring two others. Two police officers were killed when state troop-
ers and detectives stopped the perpetrators’ cars at a hastily established
roadblock. The perpetrators were identified as members of the Weather
Underground, the Black Panther Party, the Black Liberation Front, and
the Republic of New Africa, a separatist group with the goal of establish-
ing an independent black state in the American South. Contrary to the
fears of observers at the time, this incident was not a sign of renewed
strength in leftist terrorist circles but an act of desperation.

The Black Panther Party

The Black Panther Party for Self Defense was founded in the fall of 1966
by Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton in Oakland, California, as an organ-
ization that was to protect the black community from police brutality.
But the party’s platform contained more ambitious goals and left-wing
92 Terrorism
ideological fervor. In a speech in Oakland, Bobby Seale revealed the ten
points of the Black Panther Party’s platform, which demanded above
all the freedom to determine the destiny of the black community, full
employment, housing fit for human beings, education “which teaches
us our true history and our role in the present day American society,”
exemption from military service for all black men, and the release of
all black men from federal, state, county, and city jails and penitentia-
ries.58 The Black Panthers were not racist but condemned the oppression
of both blacks and whites by the capitalists and their corporate power
structure. To this end, they cooperated with the Weathermen for a short
period. For white radicals, the “Black Panthers, who armed themselves
heavily and fought the police fiercely, provided an attractive model to
follow.”59 But, as Sprinzak noted, white radicals felt guilty because they
were not treated as brutally as their black counterparts by the police.60
The Panthers’ tough rhetoric and perhaps their uniforms, black leather
jackets and black berets, attracted young black men to their ranks. Their
membership was never higher than a few thousand, but the organiza-
tion had chapters in inner cities across the country and published its own
newspaper. But the group’s militancy also attracted criminal elements that
made it easier for law enforcement to justify the brutal treatment of the
Panthers in general. In 1969 alone, twenty-seven members of the organi-
zation were killed in clashes with the police and more than 700 members
were arrested. On December 4, 1969, when the organization was no longer
a factor because most of its leaders were either in prison or in exile, Fred
Hampton, the twenty-one-year-old chairman of the Panthers in Illinois,
and Mark Clark, a twenty-two-year-old member, were killed during a
police raid on their apartment in Chicago. Five months later, a federal
grand jury in Chicago decided that “the police had grossly exaggerated
Black Panthers’ resistance” and that “the police had riddled the Panthers’
apartment with at least 82 shots, while only one shot was apparently fired
from inside.”61 In reaction to and in memory of Hampton and Clark’s
violent deaths, surviving Panthers formed the December 4 Movement, but
it disappeared nearly as quickly as it had emerged.
Although involved in violent actions but often the target of unpro-
voked police violence, the Black Panther Party did not understand itself
as a terrorist organization. As the full name indicated, the Panthers per-
ceived themselves as the black community’s defense against an overly
aggressive police force, a rationale vindicated by incidents like the deadly
raid on Hampton and Clark’s apartment.

The Symbionese Liberation Army

Founded in 1972 in Oakland, California, by community activists and
graduate students, most of them with comfortable family backgrounds,
the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) emphasized from the outset its
Terrorism in the American Context 93
interracial character and also the black and minority leadership of the
group. In its 1973 manifesto, the organization explained its revolution-
ary character:

We of the Symbionese Federation and the S.L.A. DO NOT under the

rights of human beings submit to the murder, oppression and exploi-
tation of our children and people and do under the rights granted
to the people under The Declaration of Independence of The United
States, do now by the rights of our children and people and by Force
of Arms and with every drop of our blood, Declare Revolutionary
War against the Fascist Capitalist Class, and all their agents of mur-
der, oppression and exploitation. We support by Force of Arms the
just struggle of all oppressed people for self-determination and inde-
pendence within the United States and The World.62

With its first violent action, the murder of Dr. Marcus Foster, the super-
intendent of Oakland’s public school system, the SLA alienated black
community activists, who were furious that Foster, one of the few African
Americans in a high public office, had been targeted. But it was the 1974
kidnapping of Patricia Hearst, the granddaughter of press tycoon William
Randolph Hearst, that drew national, even worldwide, attention to the
SLA. The group exploited the sudden wave of publicity to present itself
as a modern-day Robin Hood, in that it insisted on the establishment
of a free food program in return for the release of the kidnap victim.
Strangely, however, after Patricia Hearst’s father agreed to put up a total
of $4 million to feed the poor, his daughter decided to stay with her kid-
nappers and participated in a bank robbery. Although the SLA claimed
that Hearst acted out of free will, once captured and indicted, Patricia
Hearst insisted that she had been brainwashed.
There is no doubt that criminal elements were among the hard-core
members of this group, among them its leader, Donald DeFreeze. Five
members of the group, including DeFreeze, died in a 1974 shoot-out with
police in Los Angeles; others fought on for a short while before becoming
fugitives. But eventually all of the surviving SLA members were caught.

Single-Issue Terrorism
Embracing specific agendas, groups with vastly different motivations
pursue a range of goals fitting their overall belief systems. Single-issue
or special-interest groups, on the other hand, are narrowly focused on
one particular political point or a package of closely related issues. And
here, too, groups and individuals tend to fit either the conservative/
right or the liberal/left side of the political spectrum, as the examples
of conservative antiabortion extremists and the liberal pro-environment
extremists demonstrate.
94 Terrorism
Antiabortion Violence
In 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade that the U.S.
Constitution grants women the right to abortion. In the wake of the con-
troversial decision, antiabortion or pro-life organizations emerged with
the explicit goal of overturning the Roe v. Wade decision and legalized
abortion. The overwhelming number of pro-life activists and the groups
they joined were and are distinctly nonviolent and willing to work within
the legitimate political process. However, some individuals and factions
were not content with bringing legal actions to the courts, lobbying
members of Congress, organizing demonstrations, harassing abortion
providers and seekers, and staging acts of civil disobedience; instead,
they called for and/or committed violence—against abortion clinics and
their personnel. In the early 1990s, two physicians who worked in abor-
tion clinics in Pensacola, Florida, were shot by followers of extremist
antiabortion groups, namely, Rescue America and Defense Action. But
clinics and personnel in other parts of the United States were also tar-
geted by bombings and assassinations. These violent actions intimidated
many physicians sufficiently that they stopped working in abortion clin-
ics. Those who carried on were not even safe away from their workplaces.
Thus, in 1998, Dr. Barnett A. Slepian was shot and killed in the kitchen
of his private residence in Amherst in western New York State by James
C. Kopp, a longtime antiabortion radical. After his arrest Kopp claimed
that he targeted Dr. Slepian in his home in order not to harm innocent
bystanders. Sentenced to twenty-five years to life in prison, Kopp alleg-
edly told fellow-antiabortion extremists that he would do the same upon
his release if abortions were still performed at the time.63
A statistical summary that was published three months before the
April 2010 killing of Dr. George Tiller, an abortion provider in Wichita,
Kansas, revealed the following:

Since 1993, eight clinic workers—including four doctors, two clinic

employees, a clinic escort, and a security guard—have been mur-
dered in the United States. Seventeen attempted murders have also
occurred since 1991. In fact, opponents of choice have directed more
than 6,100 reported acts of violence against abortion providers since
1977, including bombings, arsons, death threats, kidnappings, and
assaults, as well as more than 156,000 reported acts of disruption,
including bomb threats and harassing calls.64

Mere threats to attack abortion clinics and kill abortion doctors can
have devastating effects on the psyche of clinic personnel. Perhaps this
was best understood after September 11, 2001, when the attacks on
New York and Washington were followed up with a serious anthrax
scare after news organizations and members of Congress received letters
Terrorism in the American Context 95
containing anthrax powder. Well before this scare, abortion clinics had
received hundreds of anthrax threats and letters claiming to contain the
lethal material. Although no anthrax was found in any of the mailings,
the mere threat frightened the recipients.
The self-proclaimed Army of God, one of the most extreme antiabor-
tion groups, did not hide its violent agenda, as the following excerpt from
its Manual reveals:

Beginning officially with the passage of the Freedom of Choice Act—

we, the remnant of God-fearing men and women of the United States
of Amerika [sic], do officially declare war on the entire child-killing
industry. After praying, fasting, and making continual supplication
to God for your pagan, heathen, infidel souls, we then peacefully,
passively presented our bodies in front of your death camps, beg-
ging you to stop the mass murder of infants. Yet you hardened your
already blackened, jaded hearts. We quietly accepted the result-
ing imprisonment and suffering of our passive resistance. Yet you
mocked God and continued the holocaust.
No longer! All of the options have expired. Our Most Dread
Sovereign Lord God requires that whoever sheds man’s blood, by
man shall his blood be shed. Not out of hatred for you, but out
of love for the persons you exterminate, we are forced to take
arms against you. Our life [sic] for yours—a simple equation.
Dreadful. Sad. Reality, nonetheless. You shall not be tortured by
our hands. Vengeance belongs to God only. However, execution is
rarely gentle.65

A number of White Supremacy and antigovernment groups have tradi-

tionally condemned abortion, at least as far as the procedure concerned
Aryan women. Some individuals from this milieu have committed anti-
abortion terror as well. According to law enforcement officials, Eric
Robert Rudolph, a White Supremacist and survivalist, is such an individ-
ual. After detonating a bomb at the Olympic Games in Atlanta in 1996
and a gay nightclub in the region, he bombed two abortion clinics. When
he was finally arrested in the spring of 2003, many people in and around
Murphy, North Carolina, where he had hidden for years, expressed
strong support for the man whose terrorist blasts had killed two and
injured 111 persons. A mother of four said, “Rudolph’s a Christian and I
am Christian and he dedicated his life to fighting abortion. Those are our
values. These are our woods. I don’t see what he did as a terrorist act.”66
The same was true for antiabortion extremist Scott Roeder, who killed
Dr. George Tiller, as his victim served as usher in his church. The killer
was associated not only with extreme antiabortion groups but also with
the right-extreme antigovernment “freemen” movement.
96 Terrorism
The Animal and Earth Liberation Fronts
On the left side of the political spectrum, the American versions of the
Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and the Earth Liberation Front (ELF)
have also advocated political violence to draw attention to their causes—
the preservation of all animal life and the protection of the environment
against exploitation by “the capitalist society [that] is destroying all life
on this planet.”67 In the United States, the ALF was established in the late
1970s along the lines of the British ALF model. Growing increasingly
more action oriented, the ALF has claimed responsibility for attacks on
and destruction of fur companies, mink farms, animal research laborato-
ries, and restaurants. The ELF, established in the United States in 1994,
also took its cue from the ELF in Great Britain, an extremist offshoot
of the Earth First! environmental group, which had left the mainstream
environmental movement to engage in highly visible protests and a civil
disobedience campaign. According to the FBI, which has characterized
the activities of ELF and ALF in North America as ecoterrorism,

The ELF advocates “monkeywrenching,” a euphemism for acts

of sabotage and property destruction against industries and other
entities perceived to be damaging to the natural environment.
“Monkeywrenching” includes tree spiking, arson, sabotage of logging
or construction equipment, and other types of property destruction.68

The ELF has also damaged or destroyed large numbers of sport utility
vehicles in order to dramatize its supporters’ opposition to “gas-guzzling”
automobiles and their negative impact on the environment.
The followers of ALF and ELF do not formally become members of
these organizations and do not pay dues; they organize in small, autono-
mous, underground cells that plan and execute violent acts to achieve
social and political change. The ALF and ELF work closely together and
may have overlapping followers. The FBI estimated that from 1996 to
early 2002, followers of ALF and ELF were responsible for more than
600 acts of ecoterrorism causing damages of more than $43 million.
These numbers do not reflect the consequences of threats against indi-
viduals and groups of people working in particular areas of the private
sector. During a Washington Post online forum on ecoterrorism with FBI
Special Agent James F. Jarboe, one participant described the tactics of
ecoterrorists this way:

I work for an industry that has been targeted by ecoterrorism—and

in the past have been personally threatened by an animal rights activ-
ist who said he knew my address and was planning to come into my
home one evening and slash my face to ribbons with a razor blade.
Perhaps some of the people viewing this discussion don’t feel that
ecoterrorism is very real—but I can assure them that I was terrified
Terrorism in the American Context 97
and was very grateful that the FBI took the threat seriously. The
group targeting me (they got my name off of a website) have been
known to blow up boats, break into homes and offices and shut
down computer systems. To me, that’s terrorism.69

In spite of the growing aggressiveness of ecoterrorists in recent years,

they have not killed or injured human beings. However, their rhetoric
has become increasingly militant and threatening. The ELF website pro-
claimed in early 2003 that “the only way, at this point in time, to stop
that continued destruction of life [on this planet] is to by any means
necessary take the profit motive out of killing.”70 Placed above this text
was an advertisement for ELF’s free “Guide to Setting Fires with Electric
Timers,” which contained do-it-yourself material about “devices, fuel
requirements, timers, security, and more.” Visitors to the site were invited
to print or download the manual. A similar ALF do-it-yourself guide
(“Arson-Around with Auntie ALF: Your Guide for Putting the Heat on
Animal Abusers Everywhere”) was available on both the ELF and the
ALF websites. “Auntie ALF, Uncle ELF and the Anti-Copyright gang”
advised readers explicitly not to injure or kill “animals, human or other-
wise” when resorting to arson, but by describing in detail the preparation
of incendiary devices, these guidelines read like invitations to join ALF’s
and ELF’s arson activists.71
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), a large above-
ground organization with 750,000 members, has not resorted to
violence but seems comfortable with the violent approaches of ALF and
ELF. Indeed, one PETA official seemed to endorse violence when he
stated, “I think it would be a great thing if, you know, all these fast
food outlets and these slaughterhouses, and the banks that fund them
exploded tomorrow.”72

The Jewish Defense League

“JDL [Jewish Defense League] upholds the principle of Barzel—iron—
the need to both move to help Jews everywhere and to change the Jewish
image through sacrifice and all necessary means—even strength, force,
and violence.”73 This sentence, contained in “The Five Principles of the
Jewish Defense League,” reveals the organization’s endorsement of vio-
lence in the service of a cause first articulated by Rabbi Meir Kahane. In
1968, Kahane founded the JDL in New York for the purpose of protect-
ing Jews in what he characterized as a hostile, anti-Semitic environment
in the United States. The next year, after more than two dozen helmeted
JDL members, clubs in their hands, appeared as “protectors” in front
of a New York synagogue because James Forman, a radical African
American, planned to present the congregation with reparation demands,
one rabbi called them “Batmen” and “no different from whites, carrying
98 Terrorism
robes and hoods, standing in front of burning crosses.”74 For many years,
the JDL staged protests against and took over the offices of mainstream
Jewish organizations. But its violent activities, mostly bombings, were
directed against Arabs and Soviet nationals in New York, Washington,
and other parts of the country. Although Kahane moved to Israel in the
early 1970s, the JDL remained active in the United States. According to
the Jewish Anti-Defamation League, “Kahane consistently preached a
radical form of Jewish nationalism which reflected racism, violence and
political extremism.”75
Preaching in favor of a territorially greater Israel, Meir Kahane estab-
lished a new, JDL-like organization, Kach (Thus), in Israel. After he was
killed by an Arab extremist during one of his appearances in New York
in November 1990, his son Binyahim Kahane founded Kahane Chai
(Kahane Lives) to carry on the legacy of his father. Because of their vio-
lence against Palestinians, both Kach and Kahane Chai were included on
the U.S. Department of State’s list of terrorist organizations. The most
lethal act of terrorism by a follower of Meir Kahane and a member of
Kach was carried out in 1994, when Brooklyn-born Dr. Baruch Goldstein
killed twenty-nine Palestinians as they prayed at a Hebron, Israel, mosque
before he was overwhelmed and killed by survivors of his terrorist attack.

Puerto Rican Nationalist Groups

On November 2, 1950, the New York Times published a front-page story
about an assassination attempt on President Harry Truman by Puerto
Rican nationalists the previous day.76 One of the Puerto Ricans, Grisello
Torresola, was killed during a shoot-out with White House police offic-
ers that left one policeman dead and two others injured. The second
would-be assassin, Oscar Collazo, was eventually sentenced to death,
but President Truman commuted the death sentence to imprisonment
for life. On March 2, 1954, a small group of Puerto Rican nationalists
fired shots from the visitors’ gallery of the U.S. House of Representatives
onto the floor of the chamber, injuring five members before they were
arrested. Rafael Miranda, Andres Cordero, and Irvin Flores were sen-
tenced to seventy-five-year prison terms; the only female member of the
team, Lolita Lebron, received a fifty-year sentence. Neither the assassina-
tion attempt on President Truman nor the attack on U.S. representatives
alarmed decision- and opinion-makers inside and outside of government.
This was reflected in an editorial in the New York Times that called the
terrorists “fanatics,” compared them to “the Nihilist assassins of Czarist
Russia,” and assured a nervous public that “we have to consider a deed
of that sort as an aberration.”77
Although the two attacks in the U.S. capital were the first acts of
terrorism by Puerto Rican extremists on the American mainland, the
movement had committed many acts of violence on the Caribbean
island in the preceding years. Following a respite after the Washington
Terrorism in the American Context 99
incidents, several new groups were established in the late 1960s and early
1970s, some of them by Latinos of Puerto Rican descent born in Chicago
and New York, others by Puerto Ricans born on the island. Some of
these groups operated exclusively on the U.S. mainland; others struck in
Puerto Rico and on the mainland. Founded in 1974 by William Morales
and Rosado Ayala, both born in Chicago, the organization Armed Forces
for National Liberation (FALN) put itself on the map of public aware-
ness in January 1975 when it bombed the historic Fraunces Tavern in
downtown Manhattan, killing four and injuring forty-four persons. In a
communiqué that was found in a telephone booth near the site, the group
claimed responsibility for the attack on the restaurant and “reactionary
corporate executives inside.” The message stated, furthermore,

The Yanki [sic] government is trying to terrorize and kill our people
to intimidate us from seeking our rightful independence from colo-
nialism. They do this in the same way they did it in Viet Nam [sic],
Guatemala, Chile, Argentina, Mexico, the Congo, and in many other
places including the United States itself . . . You have unleashed a
storm from which you Yankis [sic] cannot escape.78

In the following weeks, months, and years, the FALN was responsible
for several dozen bombings across the United States that killed six people
and injured many more. The organization was also responsible for strikes
against military and mostly civilian facilities in Puerto Rico.
A major terrorist attack claimed by Los Macheteros (The Cane Cutters,
or “machete wielders”), another extremist group, occurred in 1981 and
destroyed several U.S. military planes at an Air Force base in Puerto Rico.
In a follow-up, members of the group attacked American sailors in San
Juan, killing one and injuring three of the soldiers. But the group oper-
ated on the U.S. mainland as well. In 1983, Los Macheteros pulled off
a robbery at a Wells Fargo terminal in Hartford, Connecticut, which
netted the group more than $7 million. But what at first sight seemed a
successful coup turned into the group’s most costly misstep: The robbery
provided the FBI with enough evidence to trace and arrest key members
of the group. Two years thereafter, law enforcement caught up with sev-
eral FALN members as well.
A core of radical Puerto Rican nationalists continued to fight violently
for the island’s independence. Thus, of the five cases that the FBI catego-
rized as domestic terrorism in 1998, three occurred in Puerto Rico: The
bombings of an aqueduct project in Arecibo and of two banks in Rio
Piedras and Santa Isabel.

Ideological Waves
Whereas left-wing political violence by groups and individuals dominated
the domestic scene of the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s, and right-wing
100 Terrorism
terrorism posed the greatest problem in this respect in the 1990s, during
these periods other brands of terrorism existed side by side with the two
predominant varieties. Looking back at some four decades of fighting
domestic terrorism at the end of the twentieth century, the FBI concluded,

Waves of domestic terrorist activity are not absolute or all encom-

passing. During the 1970s and early 1980s, at the heights of the vio-
lent antiwar/left-wing activism, there were dozens of terrorist attacks
carried out by Jewish extremist groups (such as the Jewish Defense
League and the United Jewish Underground) and other extrem-
ist ethnic groups (such as the Justice Commandos of the Armenian
Genocide). There were also sporadic incidents involving special
interest groups supporting nuclear disarmament and other causes.
During the 1990s, when antigovernment right-wing groups became
a primary counterterrorism focus, left-wing extremist Puerto Rican
separatists continued to conduct the majority of successful terrorist
attacks in the United States—primarily on the island of Puerto Rico.
Today, right-wing terrorists—most notably loosely affiliated
extremists—continue to represent a formidable challenge to law
enforcement agencies around the country, even as animal rights and
environmental extremism takes on a higher profile.79

During the 1970s, left-wing terrorism was rampant in the United States.
According to the FBI, in 1972 alone there were “more than nineteen hun-
dred domestic bombings; targets included the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon,
a Boston courthouse, and a crowded Wall Street lunch haunt.”80
During the twenty years from 1980 to 1999, left-wing terrorists were
responsible for over 40 percent of all domestic terrorist incidents inside
the United States and for plots to commit terrorism that were foiled by
law enforcement. In close to 30 percent of these cases, right-wing terror-
ists were identified as perpetrators or plotters; in more than 20 percent,
special-interest terrorists; and in close to 5 percent, lone wolves like the
Unabomber, Theodore Kaczynski. The perpetrators or plotters in the rest
of the cases were not identified.
The perpetrators’ ideological markers were different in the years following
the 9/11 attacks in that most political violence was perpetrated by single-
issue extremists on the right or left of the political spectrum. Moreover,
there were increasingly attacks by Muslim extremists who followed the calls
of terrorist organizations abroad, such as Al Qaeda and the Islamic State.
As noted earlier, compared to many other countries, however, the
number of actual terrorist incidents in the United States has been fairly
low. While this is comforting at first sight, there are many violent inci-
dents that have the characteristics of terrorism but are categorized as
“hate crimes” by the FBI and local police departments. The FBI’s annual
statistics of hate crimes include typically several thousand. In 2017, for
Terrorism in the American Context 101
Table 4.1 Major Motives for Hate Crimes in 2017 and 2016

2017 2016

Total hate crimes 7,175 6,121

Anti-black/anti-African American 2,013 1,739
Anti-Jewish 938 684
Anti-white 741 720
Anti-Hispanic/anti-Latino 427 344
Anti-Muslim/anti-Arab 375 358
Anti-Native American 251 154
Anti-Asian 131 113
Source: FBI

example, there were 7,175 hate crimes, a 17 percent increase over the
previous year, with 8,828 victims, and carried out by 6,370 known
offenders with the following main motives (see also Table 4.1):

•• Racial/ethnic bias: 58.1 percent;

•• Religious prejudice: 22.0 percent;
•• Sexual orientation: 15.9 percent;
•• Gender identity bias: 1.7 percent.

Since the biases that motivate this sort of violence are fueled by politi-
cal and social issues and policy preferences, many, if not most, of these
deeds are as much acts of terrorism as the antiabortion terrorism or
ecoterrorism.
Again, since this chapter did not deal with actual terrorist attacks and
foiled terrorist plots inside the United States by homegrown or immi-
grated Muslims or Muslim converts, the topic will be addressed in the
last section of Chapter 5.

Notes
1 Martin Durham, “The American Far Right and 9/11,” Terrorism and Political
Violence 15:2 (Summer 2003): 97.
2 The statistics were taken from Mark Potok, “Rage on the Right.” The arti-
cle is available on the SPLC’s website at www.splcenter.org/get-informed/
intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2010/spring/rage-on-the-right, accessed
July 3, 2010.
3 See, for example, www.aryannations88.com/zog/barrackobama.html, accessed
May 23, 2010.
4 Southern Poverty Law Center, “The Year in Hate and Extremism,” www.
splcenter.org/Year-in-Hate-and-Extremism, accessed July 22, 2015.
5 Heidi Beirich and Susy Buchanan, “2017: The Year in Hate,” Intelligence
Report, February 11, 2018, www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-
report/2018/2017-year-hate-and-extremism#kkk, accessed April 22, 2018.
102 Terrorism
6 “Victory by Klan Feature Election,” New York Times, November 5, 1924
(retrieved from ProQuest Historical News).
7 Allison J. Gough, “Ku Klux Klan Terror,” in Martha Crenshaw and John
Pimlott, eds., Encyclopedia of World Terrorism (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe,
1997), 527–29.
8 “Smith Denounces Coolidge’s Silence on Ku Klux Klan,” New York Times,
October 19, 1924 (retrieved from ProQuest Historical News).
9 Gough, 527.
10 James Ridgeway, Blood in the Face: The Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nation, Nazi
Skin Heads, and the Rise of a New White Culture (New York: Thunder
Mouth Press, 1995), 68.
11 Kenneth S. Stern, A Force upon the Plain: The American Militia Movement
and the Politics of Hate (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), 43.
12 Christopher Hewitt, “The Political Context of Terrorism in America: Ignoring
Extremists or Pandering to Them?” Terrorism and Political Violence 12:3–4
(2000): 323–44.
13 Stern, 44.
14 Jeffrey Kaplan, “Right Wing Violence in North America,” Terrorism and
Political Violence 7:1 (1995): 44–95.
15 Duke was quoted by Ridgeway, 146.
16 From the website of the EURO, www.whitecivilrights.com, accessed March
10, 2003.
17 “ADL Backgrounder: Church of the American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan,”
www.adl.org/backgrounders/american_knights_kkk.asp, accessed March 17,
2003.
18 www.splcenter.org/centerinfo/ci-index.html, accessed March 14, 2003.
19 David Holthouse, “The Year in Hate: Number of Hate Groups Tops 900,”
http://milfuegos.blogspot.com/2009/04/year-in-hate-number-of-hate-groups-
tops.html, accessed October 22, 2010.
20 Posted on the group’s website: www.cnkkkk.com/upcomingevents.htm,
accessed May 4, 2009.
21 Southern Poverty Law Center, “The Year in Hate and Extremism.”
22 Kaplan, 46.
23 Ridgeway, 54.
24 Kaplan, 53.
25 “Breakup of Aryan Nations Leads to the Formation of Successor Groups,”
www.adl.org, accessed March 17, 2003.
26 Ibid.
27 “Aryan Nations Reappears in North Idaho,” www.ktvb.com/news/localnews/
stories/ktvbnapr2509-aryan_nations.10ea62923.html, accessed May 4, 2009.
28 Cited by the Anti-Defamation League, “Tom Metzger/White Aryan Resistance:
Update,” August 1, 2002, www.adl.org/learn/ext%5Fus/metzger%5Fup.asp,
accessed March 18, 2003.
29 Kaplan, 58.
30 Ibid.
31 Smith was quoted in Richard Roeper, “Hatemongers ‘Church’ Unites Paranoid
Losers,” Chicago-Sun Times, July 7, 1999.
32 Bill Morlin, “McVeigh Worship: The New Extremist Trend,” Southern
Poverty Law Center “Hate Watch,” June 27, 2017, www.splcenter.org/
hatewatch/2017/06/27/mcveigh-worship-new-extremist-trend, accessed April
24, 2018.
33 Ibid.
34 Heidi Beirich, “Midwifing the Militias,” Southern Poverty Law Center’s
Intelligence Report (Spring 2010), www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-
Terrorism in the American Context 103
report/browse-all-issues/2010/spring/midwifing-the-militias, accessed June
1, 2010.
35 Ibid.
36 U.S. Department of Homeland Security, “Rightwing Extremism: Current
Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and
Recruitment,” April 7, 2009, www.fas.org/irp/eprint/rightwing.pdf, accessed
June 2, 2010.
37 ADL Center for Extremism, “Murder and Extremism in the United States in
2017,” www.adl.org/resources/reports/murder-and-extremism-in-the-united-
states-in-2017, accessed May 15, 2018.
38 Ibid.
39 Daryl Johnson, “Return of the Violent Black Nationalist,” Intelligence Report,
August 8, 2017, www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2017/
return-violent-black-nationalist, accessed May 14, 2018.
40 www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2010/april/sovereigncitizens_041310, accessed
July 2, 2015.
41 Thom Jackson, “Officer Safety Corner: Sovereign Citizens on Traffic Stops,”
Police Chief Magazine, June 2015, www.policechiefmagazine.org/magazine/
index.cfm?fuseaction=display&article_id=2862&issue_id=22013, accessed
July 8, 2015.
42 Ibid.
43 Charles Kurzman and David Schanzer, “The Growing Right-Wing Terror
Threat,” New York Times, June 16, 2015, www.nytimes.com/2015/06/16/
opinion/the-other-terror-threat.html, accessed July 8, 2015.
44 Southern Poverty Law Center, “Paper Terrorism,” Intelligence Report, August
8, 2017, www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2017/paper-
terrorism, accessed May 16, 2018.
45 Ibid.
46 Quote is taken from “Anarchy at the Turn of the Century,” University
Libraries, Pan-American Exposition Exhibit Group, University of Buffalo,
http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/exhibits/panam/copyright.html, accessed
March 27, 2003.
47 Ibid.
48 John Most and Emma Goldman, “Anarchy Defended by Anarchists,”
Metropolitan Magazine 4:3 (October 1896).
49 “Emma Goldman Is Arrested in Chicago,” New York Times, September 11,
1901 (retrieved from ProQuest Historical News).
50 Walter Laqueur, A History of Terrorism (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction
Publishers, 2002).
51 Richard Bach Jensen, “The United States, International Policing and the War
against Anarchist Terrorism, 1900–1914,” Terrorism and Political Violence
13:1 (Spring 2001): 15–46.
52 Ibid., 32.
53 The quote is from Jeffrey D. Simon, The Terrorist Trap: America’s Experience
with Terrorism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 41.
54 Ibid., 38.
55 Mark Bray, ANTIFA: The Anti-Fascist Handbook (Brooklyn, NY: Melville
House, 2017), 104.
56 Ehud Sprinzak, “Extreme Left Terrorism in a Democracy,” in Walter Reich,
ed., Origins of Terrorism: Psychologies, Ideologies, Theologies, States of
Mind (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 77.
57 “Prairie Fire—Political Statement of the Weather Underground,” in Walter
Laqueur and Yonah Alexander, eds., The Terrorism Reader (New York:
Penguin, 1987), 173.
104 Terrorism
58 The quote is from the “Ten-Point Party Platform of the Black Panther Party,”
www.pbs.org/hueynewton, accessed May 12, 2003.
59 Sprinzak, 77.
60 Ibid.
61 Reported by Fred P. Graham, “U.S. Jury Assails Police in Chicago on Panther
Raid,” New York Times, May 15, 1970, 1, 14.
62 The quote is from “Symbionese Liberation Army Manifesto (1973),” in
Frank Shanty and Raymond Picquet, eds., Encyclopedia of World Terrorism:
Documents (Armonk, NY: Sharpe Reference, 2003), 960.
63 www.armyofgod.com/JamesKopp2.html, accessed September 30, 2015.
64 The statistics were assembled by NARAL Pro-Choice America Foundation
and are available at www.prochoiceamerica.org/assets/files/Abortion-Access-
to-Abortion-Violence.pdf, accessed July 10, 2010.
65 From “The Army of God Manual, Classic Third Edition,” www.armyofgod.
com/AOGsel6.html, accessed April 3, 2003.
66 The woman, Crystal Davis, was quoted in Jeffrey Gettleman with David M.
Halbfinger, “Suspect in ‘96 Olympic Bombing and 3 Other Attacks Is Caught,”
New York Times, June 1, 2003, 1.
67 According to the ELF website, www.earthliberationfront.com.
68 From the statement of James F. Jarboe, Domestic Terrorism Section Chief,
Counterterrorism Division, Federal Bureau of Investigation, “The Threat of
Eco-Terrorism,” before the House Resources Committee, Subcommittee on
Forest and Forest Health, February 12, 2002.
69 Washingtonpost.com: Live Online, www.washingtonpost.com, accessed April
5, 2003.
70 www.earthliberationfront.com, accessed April 5, 2003.
71 Abroad, extremists among the animal rights and environmental movements
went further than their American counterparts. Thus, Volker van der Graaf,
an activist on behalf of animal rights and environmental protection, assas-
sinated the Dutch right-wing politician Pim Fortuyn in May 2002 during the
national election campaign in Holland. During his trial, van der Graaf said
that he had targeted Fortuyn because of the politician’s dangerous ideas, espe-
cially with respect to animals, the environment, immigrants, Muslims, and
asylum seekers.
72 Bruce Friedrich, a PETA official, was cited by Michael Spector, “The Extremist:
The Woman Behind the Most Successful Radical Group in America,” New
Yorker, April 14, 2003, 52.
73 Posted on the JDL’s website, www.jdl.org, accessed September 27, 2004; my
emphasis.
74 “Defense League Scored by Rabbi,” New York Times, May 18, 1969, 81.
75 “About the Jewish Defense League,” www.adl.org, accessed September 26,
2004.
76 Anthony Leviero, “President Resting,” New York Times, November 2, 1950,
1.
77 “Madness in Washington,” New York Times, March 2, 1954, 24.
78 The excerpts are from “Text of Note Found Near the Blast,” New York Times,
January 25, 1975, 10.
79 From the FBI report, “Terrorism in the United States 1999,” www.fbi.gov/
publications/terror/terror99.pdf.
80 “Briefly Noted,” The New Yorker, June 8, 2015, www.newyorker.com/
magazine/2015/06/08/briefly-noted-our-souls-at-night, accessed July 5, 2015.
5 Religious Terrorism
Political Violence in the Name of God

October 31, 2017 was a warm, sunny Halloween day along the
American East coast. In Lower Manhattan tourists and natives enjoyed
the picturesque Hudson River Park. In nearby Stuyvesant High School,
one of the city’s best public schools, students got ready to be dismissed
for the day. Outside, some parents waited for their children to drive
them home. Suddenly, shortly after 3:00 p.m., a pick-up truck drove
at high speed onto the park’s bike path mowing down several cyclists
and pedestrians in a horrific truck-ramming attack. Eight persons were
killed, eleven others injured. After a one-mile killing spree the truck
collided with a school bus. Sayfullo Saipov (age twenty-nine) left the
truck shouting “Allahu Akbar!” (God is great!) and brandishing what
turned out to be pellet and paintball guns. Inside the truck, police found
an ISIS flag and nearby a note in Arabic with the slogans, “No God
but God and Muhammad is his Prophet” and “Islamic Supplication. It
will endure.”
After being shot by a New York Police Department (NYPD) officer
Saipov, a native of Uzbekistan with permanent residency in the United
States, said from his hospital bed that he was proud of what he had done
and asked whether he could display the ISIS flag in his hospital room.
Who was this young man determined to kill in the name of Allah and
ISIS—and obviously willing to die? His acquaintances and neighbors
described him as aggressive, short-tempered, angry, and unfriendly.
Working as a truck driver and later on as an Uber driver he had a
multitude of traffic violations. Yet, as one acquaintance noted follow-
ing the truck ramming, “He did not seem like a terrorist, but I did not
know him from the inside.”1 He seemed not overly religious when he
lived first in Ohio and then in Florida. But after moving to Paterson,
New Jersey, he prayed regularly at a mosque near his residence—
especially in the months preceding the attack. An Uzbek acquaintance
remembered that they argued about religion and that Saipov’s views
were radical.
Obviously, ISIS’s e-propaganda was instrumental in Saipov’s trans-
formation into a religious zealot. The investigator concluded that he
106 Terrorism
“self-radicalized” by consuming ISIS propaganda. Saipov himself told
police and FBI agents that his deadly attack was inspired by ISIS vid-
eos that he had watched. On his cellphones investigators found some
ninety videos with several thousand mostly gruesome images—ISIS fight-
ers decapitating, burning, or car-crashing infidels. There were also video
downloads of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s speeches and instruc-
tions on how to build bombs. John Miller, Deputy NYPD Commissioner,
noted that Saipov’s lethal attack followed “almost exactly to a T” the
Islamic State’s calls on social media for followers in the West to kill infi-
dels by “simple” means, for example, car ramming.
As the title of this chapter suggests, religious terrorism, just like secular
terrorism, has political ends. Secular terrorists are motivated by political
ideologies (e.g., Neo-Nazi groups by Hitler’s racist White Supremacist
views; left-wing groups like the Red Army Faction and Red Brigades of
the past by Marxist ideas) or widely accepted principles, such as the right
to self-determination or to equality. Religious terrorists are motivated by
their strong desire to live according to their religion’s teachings and fol-
low God’s will, but they also have political grievances and goals. Thus,
whether they are Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, members
of other religions, or devoted to religious sects (e.g., the Japanese Aum
Shinrikyo), extremists commit violence for both religious and political
ends. Mark Sedgwick has pointed out,

Just as religious terrorism turns out to have important political ele-

ments, “secular” terrorism also has important religious elements.
Many nationalists have spoken of their cause as “sacred,” and it is
not hard to conceive of a leftist speaking of the “cause of the opposed
masses.” A Russian terrorist of the first wave [of terrorism] wrote
of terrorism as “uniting the two sublimities of human nature, the
martyr and the hero.”2

But although secular terrorists may invoke religious rhetoric and

imagery, they are solidly grounded in worldly justifications. Religious or
pseudoreligious terrorists share the belief that their deeds are what God
wants them to do, even what God commands them to do. According to
Magnus Ranstorp, “Despite having vastly different origins, doctrines,
institutions, and practices, these religious extremists are united in their
justification for employing sacred violence either in efforts to defend,
extend or revenge their own communities or for millenarian or mes-
sianic reasons.”3
The following three case studies demonstrate how strongly many reli-
gious terrorists believe that divine guidance gives them the strength to
commit violence for what they consider to be just causes on earth and
in heaven.
Religious Terrorism 107

Case Study
Christians and Sacred Terrorism
On July 29, 1994, Paul Hill, an antiabortion activist, waited in front
of an abortion clinic in Pensacola, Florida, for Dr. John Bayard
Britton and his bodyguard James Herman Barrett, a retired Air Force
Lieutenant Colonel, to arrive. As their car entered the parking lot, Hill
first shot Barrett and, after reloading his shotgun, aimed at Britton.
He killed both men. When he was arrested by police officers a few
minutes later, he proclaimed loudly, “I know one thing, no innocent
babies are going to be killed in this clinic today.”4 Well known in radi-
cal antiabortion circles, Hill did not act impulsively, but planned his
lethal attack carefully and, so he felt, under the guidance and as an
instrument of God. From his prison cell, he later described his prepa-
ration and justification:

I was not standing for my own ideas, but God’s truths—the

same truths that have stopped blood baths and similar atrocities
throughout history. Who was I to stand in God’s way? He now
held the door open and promised great blessing for obedience.
Was I not to step through it?
When Monday arrived, I knew I had to decide. When I went
from mentally debating whether to act, in general, to planning a
particular act, I felt some relief. Romans 14:23b says “and what-
ever is not from faith is sin.” If I had not acted when I did, it would
have been a direct and unconscionable sin of disobedience. One
of the first things I told my wife, after the shooting was, “I didn’t
have any choice!” That cry came from the depths of my soul. I
was certain, and still am, that God called me to obey His revealed
will at that particular time.

This conviction did not weaken during his time in prison. In Hill’s own
words,

The inner joy and peace that have flooded my soul since I have
cast off the state’s tyranny makes my 6 × 9 cell a triumphant and
newly liberated kingdom. I shudder at the thought of ever return-
ing to the bondage currently enforced by the state.
(continued)
108 Terrorism

(continued)

But Hill also hoped for worldly rewards, namely, that his deed would
radicalize the pro-life movement. As he put it, “using the force neces-
sary to defend the unborn gives credibility, urgency, and direction to
the pro-life movement which it has lacked, and which it needs in order
to prevail.” He thought that his deed “would also help people to decide
whether to join the battle on the side of those defending abortionists,
or the side of those defending the unborn.”5 Before he was executed
by injection in September 2003, Hill said with a smile on his face, “I
expect a great reward in heaven. I am looking forward to the glory.”
But again, he also thought of immediate goals right here on earth,
when he said, “I think it [killing the man he called ‘the abortionist’
and his bodyguard] was a good thing and instead of people being
shocked at what I did, I think more people should act as I acted.”6 For
Hill, a former minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and the
Orthodox Presbyterian Church, his had been a “defensive action” on
behalf of the unborn in that he prevented his victim from ever killing
defenseless babies again.
His supporters shared his conviction. The day Hill was executed,
one antiabortion extremist declared, “Paul Hill should be honored
today. The abortionists should be executed and the judges that rule
it’s okay to kill children should be run out of Dodge.”7 On its website,
the extreme antiabortion “Army of God” continues to praise Paul Hill
as an “American hero.”

Case Study
Muslims and Sacred Terrorism
On January 7, 2015, two heavily armed brothers, Said and Chérif
Kouachi, stormed into the Paris headquarters of the satirical mag-
azine Charlie Hebdo and shot to death one by one eleven staffers,
calling out several of their victims’ names and shouting again and
again, “Alluhu Akbar!” (Allah is the greatest). As they fled the scene,
they screamed, “We have avenged the Prophet Mohammad! We
have killed Charlie Hebdo.” They claimed to have acted in the
name of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula whose leaders had
Religious Terrorism 109

put Charlie Hebdo’s editor-in-chief Stephane Charbonnier on their

“most wanted” hit list calling jihadists to punish the evil doer and
his collaborators who had published caricatures of the Prophet
repeatedly.
While hiding from the police in an old print plant, Chérif Kouachi
talked to a French radio reporter. Here is the transcript of the
conversation:

CHERIF KOUACHI: I just want to tell you that we are defenders of the
Prophet. I, Chérif Kouachi, was sent by al-Qaeda in Yemen.
I was over there. I was financed by Imam Anwar al-Awlaki.
JOURNALIST: OK. How long ago, roughly?
KOUACHI: A long time ago. Before he was killed.
JOURNALIST: OK, so you came back to France recently.
KOUACHI: No, a long time ago. I had to know how I could do things
properly.
JOURNALIST: Are you just there with your brother?
KOUACHI: That’s not your problem.
JOURNALIST: Do you have other people there with you?
KOUACHI: That’s not your problem.
JOURNALIST: Do you intend to kill again in the name of Allah? Or not?
KOUACHI: Have we killed other people in the last few days when you
were looking for us? Go on. Tell me.
JOURNALIST: You killed journalists.
KOUACHI: Wait. Did we kill civilians when you were looking for us in
the last two days?
JOURNALIST: Have you killed anyone this morning?
KOUACHI: We are not killers. We are defenders of the Prophet. We
are not like you. We defend the Prophet. There, there is no prob-
lem. We can kill. But we don’t kill women. It is you that kill the
children of Muslims in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Syria. That’s not us.
We have a code of honour, us, in Islam.
JOURNALIST: But you took vengeance . . .
KOUACHI: That’s right. We took vengeance. That’s it. You said it all.
We took vengeance.8

Soon thereafter, the brothers were killed by police bullets as they

tried to leave their hideout. Obviously, they considered themselves
martyrs for the glory of Allah and the Prophet Mohammad.
110 Terrorism

Case Study
Jews and Sacred Terrorism
In the early morning of February 25, 1994, Dr. Baruch Goldstein, a
well-known resident of the Jewish settlement Kiryat Arba near the
West Bank town of Hebron and an active member of the religious
right-wing organization Kach, went to the shrine at the Tomb of the
Patriarchs in Hebron/al Khali. Built over the site where Abraham, Sara,
and other revered religious figures are buried, the shrine provided
Jews and Muslims separate worship halls. This morning, Goldstein
went right to the Muslim side, pulled an assault rifle from under his
coat, and fired 111 shots, killing twenty-nine Muslim worshipers and
injuring many more before he himself was beaten to death.
Although Goldstein did not leave an explanatory note, the political
realities in the mid-1990s and the teachings of his late spiritual men-
tor Rabbi Meir Kahane explained his immediate political and higher
religious motives. Like others of the so-called messianic right in Israel,
Goldstein was upset about political developments: the Oslo Peace
Agreement negotiated by Israel’s Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and
PLO leader Yassir Arafat, the freeze on further Jewish settlements
in the occupied territories, and the growing attacks by Palestinian
extremists on Jewish settlements. As Ehud Sprinzak explained,

Goldstein suffered a severe crisis in the months before the Hebron

massacre. Not only was the future of Judea and Samaria put in
great doubt, but the neighboring Palestinians became increas-
ingly aggressive and violent. As the community’s emergency
physician and the doctor responsible for first aid to Jewish vic-
tims of terrorism, Goldstein was exposed to the consequences of
these circumstances more, perhaps, than anybody else. Several
victims of the intensifying Palestinian terrorism died in his hands.9

These, then, were the immediate political grievances. But how did
Goldstein’s religious convictions figure in the Hebron massacre? For
many years a disciple of Rabbi Meir Kahane, Baruch Goldstein ulti-
mately became what Sprinzak called “the new Kahane Jew”10 who
acted in accordance with the glorification of violence that the rabbi
preached. Kahane and his followers “not only responded to violence
but also produced it in new acts of death and destruction, a spiral
of violence that continued long after the zealous rabbi’s death.”11
Religious Terrorism 111

In Kahane’s “catastrophic messianism,” the central point is that “the

Messiah will come in a great conflict in which Jews triumph and
praise God through their successes . . . Anything that humiliated
the Jews was not only an embarrassment but a retrograde motion
in the world’s progress toward salvation.”12
For Kahane, both Arabs and secular Jews prevented the Israeli
people’s redemption that would come only after all Arabs were
removed from the sacred land of Israel. According to Sprinzak,
Goldstein believed in Kahane’s tenet:

There are numerous indications that following the 1990 assas-

sination of the rabbi, whom Goldstein loved dearly, the con-
secutive disasters after the 1992 elections, especially the Oslo
agreement, Goldstein started to slowly move into a desper-
ate messianic defiance. He felt that only a catastrophic act of
supreme Kiddush Hashem (sanctification of the name of God)
could change, perhaps, the course of history and put it back on
the messianic track [Kahane’s prescription for redemption]. A
responsible person who never was trigger happy, he had to carry
out this exemplary mission.13

In other words, Goldstein unloaded his shotgun on worshiping Muslim

Arabs in the conviction that this was the will of God.
While many Israelis condemned Baruch Goldstein for his lethal
act of terrorism, he was an instant hero for members of the religious
right. At his burial, one fellow settler said, “There’s no question about
it, he was a great man. There’s no question about it.”14 Another settler
added, “This was desperation for a man who was a moral man for
every instant of his life.”15

Defending the Faith in “Cosmic Wars”

The similarities among the three cases are striking in that terrorist vio-
lence was sanctioned by Christian, Muslim, and Jewish leaders of extreme
movements and carried out by their followers in the conviction that they
acted on behalf of God and in defense of their faith, tradition, right, and
interest. The men who committed the lethal acts of terrorism lived seem-
ingly normal and moral lives before they resorted to violence against what
they perceived as forces of evil. Such conversions can occur when persons
slip into what Albert Bandura has described as “moral disengagement”
112 Terrorism
that “is accomplished by cognitively restructuring the moral value of kill-
ing, so that the killing can be done free from self-censoring restraints.”16
And since religious terrorists believe they follow God’s orders, they can
displace responsibility for their deeds. According to Bandura, when it
comes to displacement of responsibility, “the higher the authorities, the
more legitimacy, respect, and coercive power they command, and the
more amenable are people to defer to them.”17 Once terrorists reach this
psychological stage, they are convinced they must fight “satanic” ene-
mies in a “cosmic war.”18 According to Mark Juergensmeyer,

The process of creating satanic enemies is part of the construc-

tion of an image of cosmic war . . . When the opponent rejects
one’s moral or spiritual position; when the enemy appears to hold
the power to completely annihilate one’s community, one’s cul-
ture, and oneself; when the opponent’s victory would be unthink-
able; and when there seems no way to defeat the enemy in human
terms—all of these conditions increase the likelihood that one will
envision one’s opponent as a superhuman foe, a cosmic enemy.
The process of satanization is aimed at reducing the power of one’s
opponents and discrediting them. By belittling and humiliating
them—by making them subhuman—one is asserting one’s own
superior moral powers.19

Religious terrorists draw strength from their conviction that they are
totally right, good, and moral and that their enemy is totally wrong,
evil, and immoral. As Jessica Stern has pointed out, “religious terrorism
attempts to destroy moral ambiguities.” The idea of defeating the evil and
Satan in an existential battle for God was central to Paul Hill’s, Baruch
Goldstein’s, and the Kouachi brothers’ convictions. When he decided to
kill Dr. Britton and his guard, Paul Hill considered the “abortionist’s knife
as [the] ‘cutting edge of Satan’s current attack’ on the world.”20 When he
decided to kill worshiping Muslim Arabs, Baruch Goldstein had come
“to the conclusion that unless stopped by a most dramatic act that would
shake the foundations of Earth and please God, the peace process would
disconfirm the dream of redemption.”21 When the Kouachis shot their way
into the Charlie Hebdo offices and killed staffers, they considered them-
selves defenders of the Prophet Muhammad willing to die as avengers.
Audrey Kurth Cronin lists the following five reasons that make religious
terrorists more dangerous than right-wing, left-wing, and nationalist/
separatist extremists:

•• Religious terrorists believe that they are involved in a “Manichaean

struggle of good against evil.” All nonbelievers are legitimate targets.
•• Religious terrorists desire “to please the perceived commands [to
commit violence] of a deity.”
Religious Terrorism 113
•• Religious terrorists have a complete disregard for “secular values and
laws.”
•• Religious terrorists are alienated from the existing social system. “They
are not trying to correct the system . . . they are trying to replace it.”
•• Religious terrorists have “dispersed popular support in civil society.”
For example, “groups such as al-Qaeda are able to find support from
some Muslim nongovernmental foundations throughout the world,
making it a truly global network.”22

Are some practitioners of sacred terrorism “evil” and others perhaps

not? After interviewing many religious extremists and their supporters,
Stern made a distinction: “Few of the terrorists described in these pages
are single-mindedly thoughtful villains like those who masterminded the
September 11 attacks. In some cases the ethical basis of their actions is
complicated.”23 More specifically, she made the following observation:

Although none of the terrorism described in this book can be

described as morally acceptable, at least in my view, the pro-life doc-
tor killers probably come closest and are worth examining in detail
for that reason. Unlike the September 11 hijackers, the doctor killers
are discriminating: they target individuals who, in their view, are in
the business of murder.24

But considering that for bin Laden and Al Qaeda or al-Baghdadi and
ISIS, as well as like-minded individuals and groups, Americans collec-
tively are guilty of killing innocent Muslims, the difference between the
killer of one doctor, several worshipers, and those responsible for the
mass killings of 9/11 is in the number of victims, not in the moral distinc-
tion between justifiable and nonjustifiable murder.

The Proliferation of Religious Violence

For David Rapoport, the 9/11 attacks and similar violence by Al Qaeda
and like-minded groups and cells are part of a wave of religious terrorism
that began at the end of the 1970s and overlapped the “New Left Wave,”
which, apart from a few exceptions, disappeared after the end of the
Cold War. Since the “Anarchist Wave” (beginning in the 1880s) and the
“Anti-Colonial Wave” (beginning in the 1920s) preceded the “New Left
Wave” (beginning in the late 1960s), he considers the “Religious Wave”
as the fourth in the history of modern terrorism, and Islam the most
important religion in this latest period—but not the only one.25 Unlike
Rapoport, who names three near simultaneous events (the “Iranian
Islamic Revolution in 1979, the start of the Islamic hijri calendar, and
the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan”) as starting points of the “Fourth
Wave,” Mark Sedgwick considers 1967 as the crucial date:
114 Terrorism
It was the shockingly sudden and complete defeat of the Arab armies
by Israel in that year that began the shattering of the Arab nationalist
dream incarnated by Egypt’s President Nasser, a process completed
by President Sadat’s concessions at Camp David in 1979 . . . It was
after 1967 that the re-Islamization of Egyptian society started. The
Arabs who went to fight for Islam in Afghanistan were in the mid-
dle of the wave, not at the start of it. The fourth wave, then, started
not in Iran or Afghanistan, but in Palestine and Israel, in almost the
same year that the third wave started in Europe and—to a lesser
extent—in America.26

Like Rapoport, this writer considers the Iranian Islamic revolution and
the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (not the start of the fifteenth hijri cen-
tury) as triggers of the “Fourth Wave,” not the Arab–Israeli war of 1967.
While the “re-Islamization of Egyptian society started”27 after that war,
the more immediate result was the establishment of secular Palestinian
terrorist organizations that fit into the third or “New Left Wave” and
actually cooperated with European Marxist terrorist groups.
But whatever the exact date of the jihadist movement’s birth, there
is no denying that religiously motivated and justified political violence
of this sort has increased dramatically in the last several decades. As
Table 5.1 shows, of the five nonstate entities responsible for most ter-
rorist attacks worldwide in 2016, three were organizations claiming
to fight in the name of pure Islam. Houthi rebels, Shias supported by
Iran and Hezbollah, fought in the Yemini civil war against Sunnis,
supported by Saudi Arabia. The Indian Maoist Party was the only non-
Muslim group among the top five.

Alienation, Humiliation, and Fear

Although Sedgwick argues that Al Qaeda’s short-term or immediate
goals are more political than religious and “owe more to European radi-
calism than to Islam,” he also recognizes that the organization is “clearly
marked by Islam, and not only in its ultimate [religiously defined] aims.

Table 5.1 Nonstate Entities Committing Most Terrorist Attacks in 2016

Attacks Fatalities Injuries Kidnapped/ Hostages

Islamic State 1,133 9,114 7,671 8,379

Taliban 848 3,615 3,572 1,498
Maoists, India 336 174 141 171
Al-Shabaab 332 740 921 375
Houthi Rebels 267 374 568 137
Source: National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism
Religious Terrorism 115
Al Qaeda’s potential constituency is the world’s Muslims, and the means
it uses to mobilize support in this constituency are derived from Islam.”28
The connection between shared Islamic concepts and images and terms
on the one hand and the need to recruit members and sympathizers on
the other is important in that it provides the movement with a large
pool of potential supporters. Al Qaeda is not unique in this respect as
al-Shabaab, Boko Haram, ISIS, and like-minded groups demonstrate.
Juergensmeyer notes with respect to all kinds of religious movements,

The groups that have made a long-term impact, such as Hamas, the
Khalistan movement [in India], Christian Identity, and the Jewish right
wing, have used violence not only to draw attention to themselves but
also to articulate the concerns of those within their wider cultures.
Radical though they may be, they have represented widely held
feelings of alienation and oppression, and for this reason their stri-
dent language and violent acts have been considered by their cohorts
as perhaps intemperate but understandable.29

Those who have studied religious terrorists seem to agree that under-
neath their tough words and deeds, there is a great deal of alienation,
humiliation, and even fear. Stern concluded that the grievances expressed
by religious terrorists “often mask a deeper kind of angst and a deeper
kind of fear. Fear of a godless universe, of chaos, of loose rules, and of
loneliness.”30 It is not unusual that religious extremists are frustrated by
the loss or pending loss of their privileged station in society. Thus, radi-
cal elements in the Christian Identity movement do not hide that they
hate African Americans and Jews, whom they blame for all the ills in
American society and in particular “for pornography, for the lack of
morality, for the economic situation in America, for minority rights over
white rights, and for kicking god out of schools.”31 Since many of the
rank-and-file members of such groups have at best finished high school,
work in low-wage jobs, or are unemployed, they blame nonwhite, non-
Christian groups for their predicament. In other societies, for example in
the Middle East, the frustration of university-educated males stems often
from their inability to find high-level jobs that require the skills they have.
After her conversations with Kerry Noble, a leader in the Covenant,
the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord, a Christian Identity group, and
many religious extremists abroad, Stern concluded,

The grievances Noble described were similar to those of religious

extremists around the world. Al Qaeda’s complaints about the new
world order sound remarkably similar to Kerry Noble’s for example.
Ayman Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden’s second in command, accuses
Western forces of employing international institutions such as the
United Nations, multinational corporations, and international news
116 Terrorism
agencies as weapons in their “new crusade” to dominate the Islamic
world. They often reject feminism in favor of “family values,”
whether their families are in Oklahoma or Peshawar.32

Real or perceived humiliation, too, seems to drive males into violent

groups. Thus, extremists like Al Qaeda’s Ayman al-Zawahiri believe
that “violence is a way to cure Muslim youth of the pernicious effects of
centuries of humiliation at the hands of the West.” Similarly, Christian
Identity extremists join violent groups to regain their masculinity and
forget that they were humiliated by gender and racial equality. Thus,
Kerry Noble told Stern that “he felt strong for the first time in his life
when he joined a violent, racist cult.” He said he had been humiliated
from elementary school on, when he was forced to play on the girls’
side in physical education classes.33 And violent Jewish individuals and
groups as well “see the peace process and giving up the occupied territo-
ries as humiliating to Jews.”34
Whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Sikh, or devoted to idi-
osyncratic sects, religious extremists and fanatics resort to violence in
opposition to the overbearing, permissive, change-oriented, postmodern
world that spreads secular values and in the process threatens and even
destroys their way of life. This explains why the immediate objectives of
these groups and individuals are political. They choose the path of violence
in efforts to regain control of their environment and remake the world
around them according to their vision in order to achieve their ultimate
religious ideal—eventually. In the process, though, they distance them-
selves from the mainstream tenets of their respective religions. Even when
aware that they are out of step with the mainstream of their faiths, religious
extremists in various parts of the world tend to insist that “their groups are
in fact revivals of the original forms of their traditions.”35 Unfortunately,
the targets of religious terrorism are often unable or unwilling to distin-
guish between nonviolent mainstream religions and their teachings on the
one hand and the “new religions” of extremist leaders that justify terror-
ism in the name of God on the other. As a result, a whole religion may be
stereotyped by the image of its most extreme fringe groups.
Well before the 9/11 attacks, terrorism scholar Magnus Ranstorp
recognized the causes and dangers of the “virtual explosion of religious
terrorism in recent times” when he stated:

The uncertainty and unpredictability in the present environment as

the world searches for a new world order, amidst an increasingly
complex global environment with ethnic and nationalist conflicts,
provides many religious terrorist groups with the opportunity and
ammunition to shape history according to their divine duty, cause,
and mandate while it indicates to others that the end of the time itself
is near.36
Religious Terrorism 117
This assessment sums up the setting that is conducive to the prolifera-
tion of international religious terrorism and the domestic variety as
well. Indeed, many seemingly domestic religious terrorists—for exam-
ple, adherents of Christian Identity in the United States or Al Qaeda-like
groups in Arab countries (e.g., Hezbollah)—are driven by grievances that
transcend the domestic context. Ironically, in many instances, the same
religious extremists, who resent what they perceive as the negative effects
of globalization, exploit vehicles of globalization, most of all global com-
munication and transnational arms and drug trafficking, to finance their
organizations and terrorist operations.
However, in spite of the long history of terrorism in all religious set-
tings, among the adherents of the same and different religions, and in
spite of the numerous similarities between these violent fanatics, the self-
proclaimed warriors in the name of Islam pose at the present time the
greatest threat because of the large number of individuals, cells, organi-
zations, and even networks devoted to the so-called jihadi cause. The
following section therefore deals exclusively with the theoretical under-
pinnings of the jihadi movement, its justification of violence, and the
impact of jihadi ideology on contemporary terrorists’ holy war against
infidels in their own and other religions.

The Jihadi Movement and Political Violence

Shortly before the 2008 presidential election, during an appearance
on NBC TV’s Meet the Press program, former Secretary of State Colin
Powell criticized opponents of Senator Barack Obama who claimed that
he was a Muslim. The retired general added, “What if he was? Is there
something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer is
no, that’s not America. Is there something wrong with some 7-year-old
Muslim American kid believing that he or she could be president?”37
This was a much-needed civics lesson on tolerance and on the fundamen-
tal value of equality in a nation of immigrants. As Mark Juergensmeyer
noted, “Most Muslims regard Islam as a religion of peace, and Christians
and Jews regard their own religion in the same way.”38
Yet, it is indisputable that since the mid-1990s, and even more so since
the attacks of September 11, 2001, the most serious terrorist threat has
been closely tied to the most extreme strain of Muslim revivalism. After
9/11, there was a sudden surge of interest in Islam in the United States and
elsewhere in the West. University courses on Islam were oversubscribed
and books on the subject were written and bought in unprecedented
numbers. But most Americans were not interested and remained clueless.
In 2006, Jeff Stein, the national security editor at Congressional
Quarterly, concluded his series of interviews with Washington’s coun-
terterrorism officials in Congress, the FBI, and other agencies with the
question, “Do you know the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite?”
118 Terrorism
He was not looking for theological explanations, but rather some basic
knowledge about the rivalries between the two groupings and their polit-
ical strengths and differences in Iraq and other settings. As he reported,

Most American officials I’ve interviewed don’t have a clue. That

includes not just intelligence and law enforcement officials, but also
members of Congress who have important roles overseeing our spy
agencies. How can they do their jobs without knowing the basics?39

One would assume that none of these clueless counterterrorism experts

knew any details about the ideology of those they fought in the “war
against terror.” The following section explains the various constituent
groups within the overall Muslim population and, in particular, the reli-
giopolitical underpinnings of the ideas that fuel the violent mission of Al
Qaeda Central’s leaders as well as like-minded groups and individuals.

Muslims
Of the about 1.3 billion Muslims around the world, 85 percent are
Sunnis and the rest are Shias (or Shi’ites). They all follow the teachings
of the Prophet Muhammad and the Qu’ran. The two branches of Islam
split after Muhammad’s death, and to this day Sunnis believe that the
most competent among his companions were right in succeeding him,
whereas Shias believe that Muhammad’s descendants were his spiritual
heirs, with his son-in-law Ali first in line. Vali Nasr has explained that the
Sunni–Shia division “somewhat parallels the Protestant–Catholic differ-
ence in Western Christianity.”40 In the post-9/11 era, there is particularly
in the West a notion that Islam is the problem, that Islam encourages
violence. But John Esposito cautioned that, “in discussing political Islam,
it is important to distinguish between mainstream and extremist move-
ments. The former participate within the political system, whereas the
latter engage in terrorism in the name of Islam.”41 The vast majority of
Muslims do not agree with their extremist and violent brethren, espe-
cially not when the religious fanatics harm women, children, and old
people or attack fellow Muslims and harm Muslim interests.

Islamists
Within the Muslim population at large, Islamists, who strive for the
establishment or strengthening of the Islamic state on the basis of Islamic
law, constitute the next largest component on both the Sunni and the
Shia sides. Fueled by a strong religious revival since the 1960s and grow-
ing dissatisfaction with their authoritarian, pro-Western governments,
religion, mosques, and mullahs became a rallying point when there was
no space allowed for any other. The use of the mosque–mullah network
Religious Terrorism 119
was critical in the Iranian revolution, as have been private (nongovern-
mental) mosques and their imams in Egypt and many other countries.42
Most Islamists support peaceful change, but a growing minority
believes that violence will advance their cause. The oldest and most
influential Islamist movement is the transnational Muslim Brotherhood
that was founded in Egypt in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna in opposition
to the British-backed monarchy. In the mid-twentieth century, it spread
throughout the Arab world and took root in countries such as Algeria,
Libya, the Palestinian territories, Sudan, Syria, and Tunis. Officially, the
Brotherhood has claimed to oppose violence but it makes an exception for
Palestinians in their fight against Israelis. In reality, however, the Muslim
Brotherhood in Egypt and affiliates elsewhere have resorted to terrorist
means in various settings and situations. As the 9/11 Commission Report
noted, “In some countries, its [the Brotherhood’s] oppositional role is
nonviolent; in others, especially Egypt, it has alternated between violent
and nonviolent struggle with the regime.”43 In some instances, the most
violent elements formed their own units within the Brotherhood; in other
cases, they established separate and more extremist groups.

Salafis and Wahhabis

The Salafi movement within the larger Muslim population comprises the
most puritanical form of Sunni Islam and promotes the return to
the original teachings of the Prophet Muhammad and his companions.
Some observers have compared this school of thought to the seventeenth-
century Puritan movements in England and America. Salafis believe that
the Qu’ran and the Prophet Muhammad’s practices (Hadith), not the later
interpretations of these sources by Islamic scholars, are the most authentic
guidelines for the devout Muslim. Like other puritanical movements, Salafis
believe that the end of Islam’s golden age, when Muslim rule extended into
Europe, was caused by their own “rulers and people who turned away
from the true path of their religion, thereby leaving Islam vulnerable to
encroaching foreign powers eager to steal their land, wealth, and even
souls.”44 Afghanistan under the rule of the Taliban movement reflected
best what the Salafi school of thought envisions as the societal ideal.
The most influential Salafis are Saudi clerics who preach an old ver-
sion of Salafism called Wahhabism, an eighteenth-century movement
named after its founder, Muhammad bin Abd al Wahhab. Since the
modern kingdom of Saudi Arabia was established in 1932, Wahhabi
clerics have enjoyed a great deal of influence on all aspects of their
country’s religious, political, social, and cultural realities. The symbiotic
relationship between Saudi rulers and Wahhabi leaders spread religious
puritanism and intolerance throughout the kingdom, and it also bought
the ruling House of Saud protection from violent upheaval arising from
Salafi opposition to Westernized members of the royal family and to the
120 Terrorism
influence of the West on the Saudi Arabian Peninsula. This arrangement
came with a price tag: The Saudi government and wealthy Saudis financed
the spread of Wahhabi militancy throughout the Middle East as well as
in other parts of the world, including Europe and the United States. In
more recent times, moreover, Saudi Arabia has produced growing num-
bers of terrorists. Fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 terrorists were citizens of
Saudi Arabia. And records of foreign nationals who entered Iraq between
August 2006 and August 2007 to fight within the Islamic State of Iraq,
an Al Qaeda-affiliated group, revealed that of the 595 entries that listed
the nationality of these jihadis, 41 percent were of Saudi Arabian origin.45

Jihadis
Although most Salafis do not engage in violence and do not support the ter-
rorist acts of fellow Salafis, today’s most dangerous and by far most numerous
terrorist groups and cells are part of the Salafi movement. Marc Sageman
speaks of the “global Salafi jihad” as a revivalist movement “stretching from
Morocco to the Philippines, eliminating present national boundaries.” He
characterizes Al Qaeda as the “vanguard” of the jihadi movement.46

The Meaning of Jihad

When Osama bin Laden and four other leaders of jihadi groups in
Egypt, Pakistan, and Bangladesh issued a fatwa, or religious edict, in
February 1998, it was titled “The World Islamic Front for Jihad Against
the Jews and Crusaders.” In the text, bin Laden explained that “reli-
gious scholars throughout Islamic history have agreed that jihad is
an individual duty when an enemy attacks Muslim countries . . . After
faith, there is no greater duty than fighting an enemy who is corrupt-
ing religion and the world.”47 Bin Laden, other Al Qaeda leaders, and
their followers, supporters, and sympathizers around the globe use
the term jihad frequently to describe their terrorist mission and deeds.
Not surprisingly, the term has negative connotations in the West.
The literal meaning of jihad is striving or struggling in the path of
God and the Prophet Muhammad. And there is a distinction between
the greater jihad, as personal spiritual and moral struggle, and the
lesser jihad, as a violent struggle for the good of Islam. This distinc-
tion goes back to Muhammad, who reportedly said, “We return from
the lesser jihad [warfare] to the greater jihad [the personal strug-
gle to live a moral life].”48 As for the more controversial of the two,
Sageman explains,
Religious Terrorism 121

The lesser jihad is the violent struggle for Islam. Traditional

Islamic jurisprudence saw jihad as an obligation in a world divided
into the land of Islam (dar al-Islam) and the land of conflict (dar
al-harb). The Muslim community, the umma, was required to
engage in a jihad to expand dar al-Islam throughout the world so
that all humankind could benefit from living within a just political
social order. One school of interpretation diluted this belligerence
by introducing the notion of land treaty (dar al-suhl), which had
concluded a truce with dar al-Islam and was not subject to jihad.49

When it comes to the belligerent or lesser jihad, there is another

distinction between defensive and offensive jihad—the first against
intruders in Muslim territory, such as the mujahideens’ fight against
the Soviet invaders of Afghanistan or against American and other
Western invaders of Iraq; the second to conquer non-Muslim land
and convert infidels.

In another expert’s view,

Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda symbolize a global jihad, a network

of extremist groups threatening Muslim countries and the West,
whose roots have proved deeper and more pervasive than most had
anticipated. This new global threat, which emerged from the jihad
against the Soviet Union’s occupation of Afghanistan, has exploded
across the Muslim world from Central, South, and Southeast Asia to
Europe and America.50

In terms of personnel, organization, and tactics, the origins of the global

jihadi movement can indeed be traced back to the Arab mujahideens’
fight against Soviet invaders and against Afghan government troops in
the 1980s, but the well-developed ideology of militant jihad that is at the
core of the theoretical underpinnings, teachings, and actions of Al Qaeda
and others in the contemporary jihadi movement has much deeper roots
as more recently the endless stream of ISIS publications attest to.

Jihadi Ideology
Utilizing a “citation analysis” of texts available in print and on jihadi
websites to identify the most influential theorists in the movement and
differentiating between leading medieval and modern radical thinkers,
two scholars found that in the first category the works by Ibn Taymiyya
122 Terrorism
are most popular among contemporary jihadis, whereas Sayyid Qutb is
most influential among modern thinkers in this respect.51
The texts authored by Taymiyya, a jurist living in the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries, offer a universal rationale for fighting foreign
invaders—at his time a call to fight against the Mongols or Tartars and
today a perfect justification of violent jihad against Westerners that are
present and/or have interests in the Muslim world. Taymiyya held that
fighting invaders was not only the right but the duty of every devoted
Muslim. He wrote furthermore that Mogul rulers who had converted to
Islam were not real Muslims and that they and any other Muslim group
not fully observing Islamic law must be defeated—a license to fight a
holy war against Muslim rulers and regimes that violate the tenets of
puritan Islam.
As for modern jihadi theorists calling for jihad against non-Muslims
and the overthrow of local apostate regimes, the dominant ideologue
remains to this day the late Egyptian Sayyid Qutb, perhaps the last of
the influential laypersons in the jihadi movement as compared to trained
Islamic and jihadi theological experts who are dominant today. The turn-
ing point in Qutb’s life was his two-year stay in the United States in the
late 1940s, during which he began his metamorphosis from admirer of
America and the West to jihadi revolutionary. Rejecting what he per-
ceived as the moral decadence and materialism of Western societies,
he joined the Muslim Brotherhood upon his return to Egypt, rose to
be the organization’s leading ideologue, and eventually clashed with the
government. Allegedly involved in a plot to assassinate Egyptian presi-
dent Gamal Abdel Nasser, Qutb was imprisoned and tortured but later
allowed to write. In his most influential work, “Milestones,” a mani-
festo of revolutionary religiopolitical Islam, Qutb declared that both
Marxism and the West’s model of democracy and capitalism had failed
and that the world was harmed most of all by the loss of moral values. It
was the responsibility of true Muslims to bring the world back onto the
right path; this, however, was possibly only after self-purification within
the Muslim community. For Qutb, the world consisted of two camps:
(1) Islam and (2) jihiliyya, the part characterized by barbarism, deca-
dence, and unbelief—a state that existed in the world before the Prophet
Muhammad delivered his divine message. According to Qutb, the choice
is between those two camps—between the good and the evil, God and
Satan. For him, far more people, Muslims included, are on the side of
jihiliyya and therefore all Muslims have the duty to “take up arms in this
fight. Any Muslim who rejects his ideas is just one more nonbeliever wor-
thy of destruction.”52 Qutb wrote of the need “to initiate the movement
of Islamic revival in some Muslim country” that would set “an example
in order to fashion an example that will eventually lead Islam to its des-
tiny of world domination.”53 For this to happen, he hoped for a vanguard
that would translate his ideas into reality.
Religious Terrorism 123
These ideas came to guide contemporary jihadi terrorists, especially
the leading strata—Qutb’s vanguard. Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahiri,
who later rose to become Al Qaeda’s second in command, was on the
frontline in Qutb’s vanguard in that “the same year [1966] that Sayyid
Qutb went to the gallows, al-Zawahiri helped form an underground cell
devoted to overthrow the government and establish an Islamic state. He
was fifteen years old.”54 Osama bin Laden, too, came to embrace the
tenets of Qutb’s extremist teachings, as did other leaders and followers
in the global jihadi network. Indeed, Qutb’s younger brother and keeper
of his legacy was reportedly one of bin Laden’s advisors.55

Excerpts from Communications by Osama bin

Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri
From bin Laden’s post-9/11 Message, October 7, 2001
God has struck America at its Achilles heel and destroyed its greatest
buildings, praise and blessings to Him. America has been filled with
terror from north to south and from east to west, praise and blessings
to God. What America is tasting today is but a fraction of what we
have tasted for decades . . . So when God Almighty granted success
to one of the vanguard groups of Islam, He opened the way for them
to destroy America utterly. I pray to God Almighty to lift them up to the
highest Paradise.

From bin Laden’s Remarks during Interview with

Al-Jazeera, October 21, 2001
I say that the battle isn’t between the al-Qaeda organization and the
global Crusaders. Rather, the battle is between Muslims—the people
of Islam—and the global Crusaders . . . These young men that have
sacrificed themselves in New York and Washington, these are the
ones that speak the truth about the conscience of our umna, they are
its living conscience, which sees that it is imperative to take revenge
against the evildoers and transgressors and criminals and terrorists,
who terrorize the true believers. So, not all terrorism is restrained or
ill-advised. There is terrorism that is ill-advised and there is terrorism
that is a good act . . . So, America and Israel practice ill-advised ter-
rorism, and we practice good terrorism, because it deters those from
killing our children in Palestine and other places.
(continued)
124 Terrorism

(continued)

From a Taped bin Laden Message, Addressed to

the American People, Aired by Al-Jazeera,
January 19, 2006
You have tried to prevent us from leading a dignified life, but you will
not be able to prevent us from a dignified death. Failing to carry out
jihad, which is called for in our religion, is a sin. The best death to us
is under the shadows of swords. Don’t let your strength and modern
arms fool you. They win a few battles but lose the war. Patience and
steadfastness are much better. We were patient in fighting the Soviet
Union with simple weapons for 10 years and we bled their economy
and now they are nothing. In that there is a lesson for you.

From an al-Zawahiri Videotape and Remarks Addressed

to President-elect Barack Obama, November 19, 2008
As for the crimes of America which await you [President-elect
Obama], it appears that you continue to be captive to the same crimi-
nal American mentality towards the world and towards the Muslims.
The Muslim Ummah received with extreme bitterness your hypocriti-
cal statements to and stances towards Israel, which confirmed to
the Ummah that you have chosen a stance of hostility to Islam and
Muslims . . . you have climbed the rungs of the presidency to take
over the leadership of the greatest criminal force in the history of
mankind and the leadership of the most violent Crusade ever against
the Muslims. And in you and in Colin Powell, [Condoleezza] Rice and
your likes, the words of Malcolm X (may Allah have mercy on him)
concerning “House Negroes” are confirmed.
You also must appreciate, as you take over the presidency of
America during its Crusade against Islam and Muslims, that you are
neither facing individuals nor organizations, but are facing a jihadi
awakening and renaissance which is shaking the pillars of the entire
Islamic world; and this is the fact which you and your government and
country refuse to recognize and pretend not to see.56

From the 2014 Announcement of Declaring

the Establishment of the ISIS Caliphate under the
Leadership of Caliph Ibrahim (Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi)
So rush O Muslims and gather around your khalifah [caliphate], so
that you may return as you once were for ages, kings of the earth and
Religious Terrorism 125

knights of war. Come so that you may be honored and esteemed,

living as masters with dignity. Know that we fight over a religion that
Allah promised to support. We fight for an ummah to which Allah has
given honor, esteem, and leadership empowerment and strength on
the earth. Come O Muslims to your honor, to your victory. By Allah, if
you disbelieve in democracy, secularism, nationalism, as well as all
the other garbage and ideas from the west, and rush to your religion
and creed, then by Allah, you will own the earth, and the east and
west will submit to you. This is the promise of Allah to you. This is the
promise of Allah to you [. . .]
O soldiers of the Islamic State, Allah (the Exalted) ordered us with
jihad and promised us with victory but He did not make us responsible
for victory. Indeed, Allah (the Exalted) blessed you today with this vic-
tory, thus we announced the khilāfah in compliance with the order of
Allah (the Exalted). We announced it because – by Allah’s grace – we
have its essentials.
By Allah’s permission, we are capable of establishing the khilāfah.
So we carry out the order of Allah (the Exalted) and we are justified –
if Allah wills – and we do not care thereafter what happens, even if we
only remain for one day or one hour, and to Allah belongs the matter
before and after.57

Although there are dozens of modern and premodern theorists who

have contributed or added to one or the other aspect of jihadi ideology,
Qutb has remained for the time being the most influential one. Important
here is that all influential theorists are hardliners and are in favor of vio-
lence. According to Sageman, “Salafi ideology determines its [the jihadi
movement’s] mission, sets its goals, and guides its tactics.”58 Even the
training of self-described holy warriors and martyrs in the service of jihad
is guided by this extreme ideology. After studying the doctrines for ter-
rorist training as articulated by leading theorists, Brynjar Lia concluded,

When preparing recruits for waging a terrorist campaign or partici-

pating in a protracted guerrilla war, the jihadi theorists unanimously
agreed that ideological indoctrination and spiritual preparation
should take precedence over physical and military training. In order
to produce the kind of battle-hardened, martyrdom-seeking fighters
that have filled the ranks of jihadi groups of the past, the jihadi theo-
rists devote extraordinary attention to spiritual training.59

Not only recruits are the targets of the missionary fanaticism that perme-
ates the jihadi movement. Wherever these extremists get a foothold, they
126 Terrorism
force their convictions onto the population. Reporting from Iraq in the
summer of 2008, Alissa J. Rubin wrote,

Diyala residents and officials say [that] militants from Al Qaeda in

Mesopotamia have worked to instill their radical Islamist vision in
the population. Almost immediately after moving in four years ago,
they began holding religion classes for men and women. “Even in
Baquba, my niece went to some; she was shaken,” said Shamaa Abad
al-Kader, the headmistress of a school for girls in Muqdadiya who
also serves on Diyala’s provincial council. “They gathered people in
the villages; they brought women into Baquba and gave them lec-
tures on how to behave,” Ms. Kader said. “These Al Qaeda men
were going into the schools, into the mosques and they forced people
to listen to them. My niece said the man who came to her school had
a long beard and a sword with him.”60

In Afghanistan, jihadis of the resurging Taliban used violence to force

fellow Afghans to live according to their extremist Salafi convictions, as
they had during their fundamentalist movement’s five-year reign. During
that period, girls were not allowed to get an education, but this changed
after the Taliban was toppled in the wake of the post-9/11 invasion by
a U.S.-led coalition force. When the Taliban regained strength in former
strongholds like Kandahar, teachers and female students became the par-
ticular targets of brutal and often lethal attacks. In one incident, Taliban
militants doused a group of school girls and their teachers with acid, sev-
eral of whom were hospitalized with burnt faces. When arrested, the men
confessed that “a high-ranking member of the Taliban had paid the mili-
tants 100,000 Pakistani rupees ($1,275) for each of the girls they man-
aged to burn.”61 The Kabul government called the attack “un-Islamic,”
but for Taliban jihadis this sort of terrorism was part of their holy fight
to resurrect Afghanistan as a model of pure Salafi society.
To sum up, terrorism in the name of God has been practiced by the
adherents of all major religions and by pseudoreligious sects. Today,
however, jihadis commit far more and far more lethal terrorist attacks
and pose by far the greatest threat inside and outside the Muslim world.

Homegrown Jihadis in the West—Including the

United States
When tackling the threat of terrorism by homegrown or immigrated jihadis
in the West in the post-9/11 years, terrorism experts pointed to the dif-
ferences between the Muslim diaspora in Western Europe and American
Muslims. The greater degree of radicalization of and violence by second-
and third-generation Muslims in Europe in comparison to their American
counterparts was not simply explained by pointing to greater vigilance
Religious Terrorism 127
on the part of American law enforcement. Rather, American Muslims’
societal integration was seen as a protective wall against indoctrination and
recruitment by jihadi propaganda and activities. “The nation as a melting
pot, the American Dream, individualism, and grass-root voluntarism—
these cultural values make American Muslims less likely than their
European counterparts to accept the interpretation that there is a war
against Islam,” Marc Sageman wrote seven years after 9/11. “It seems
easier to be anti-American from afar than from within.”62 In a 2007
report, Brian Jenkins noted that the

absence of significant terrorist attacks or even advanced terror-

ist plots in the United States since 9/11 is good news that cannot
entirely be explained by increased intelligence and heightened secu-
rity. It suggests America’s Muslim population may be less suscep-
tible than Europe’s Muslim population, if not entirely immune to
jihadist ideology.

But he also cautioned that “it requires not majorities, but only handfuls
to carry out terrorist attacks.”63
This last point was driven home in 2009, when two lethal acts of ter-
rorism and six foiled plots carried out or planned by American Muslims
added up to the by far largest number of such cases in the United States in
a single year. In the period from September 11, 2001, through December
31, 2008, there were a total of twelve cases in which American Muslims
were charged with plotting terrorist strikes within the United States com-
pared to six such cases in 2009 alone. None of these plotters was able to
carry out their attacks. But in addition to the six foiled plots in 2009, ter-
rorists succeeded in two cases: The most deadly of the two actual attacks
occurred on November 5, when Army Major Nidal Hasan went on a
shooting spree at the Army base at Fort Hood, Texas, killing thirteen per-
sons and injuring twenty-eight others. Five months earlier, an American
Muslim convert shot and killed a person and injured another at a military
recruitment center in Little Rock, Arkansas. In between, a potentially
most devastating attack on New York City’s subway system was pre-
vented, when Najibulla Zazi, a permanent resident of the United States,
was arrested for trying to build and detonate a weapon of mass destruc-
tion. Two fellow American plotters, former high school classmates, were
also charged as were several coconspirators abroad.
Shocking, too, was the failed bombing attempt at Times Square in
the heart of Manhattan on May 1, 2010, a Saturday, when many New
Yorkers and tourists populated the area. Around 6:30 p.m., an alert street
vendor noticed smoke escaping from the inside of a sport utility vehicle
(SUV) that was parked close by at 45th street. Then he heard the sound
of what seemed like a firecracker. He alerted a mounted police officer.
Within minutes, the police began to evacuate the area in and around
128 Terrorism
Times Square. Luckily, the home-made bomb device inside the SUV did
not explode as planned. Less than fifty-four hours later, Faisal Shahzad,
the would-be bomber and recruit of the Pakistani Taliban, was arrested
at Kennedy Airport before he could leave the United States for Pakistan.
Shahzad, a thirty-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen, came from
Pakistan as a nineteen-year-old, had studied, worked as a financial
analyst, bought his own home, married, and became the father of two
children. He did not come to the United States to escape poverty. As the
son of a military officer, he had enjoyed a privileged upbringing in a
rather liberal environment. When studying in the United States, he was
interested in luxury cars, women, and drinking. By 2006, Shahzad had
found religion and bought into the prevalent view on jihadi websites that
he frequented, namely, “that the West is at war with Islam, and Muslims
are suffering humiliation because they have strayed from their religious
duty to fight back.”64
As catastrophic terrorism hit Western Europe hard in the second dec-
ade of the twenty-first century the United States experienced the two
most lethal terrorist attacks since 9/11 as well.
On December 2, 2015, Saed Rizwan Farook (age twenty-nine) and
his wife Tashfeen Malik (also age twenty-nine) left their six-month-old
daughter with his mother pretending to have a doctor’s appointment.
Instead, they drove from their home in the city of Redlands, California,
to a training session and Christmas party at San Bernardino County’s
Health Department, where the husband worked as an inspector. After
attending the event alone for a while Farook left abruptly. Sometime
later the couple, wearing face masks and tactical gear and carrying semi-
automatic pistols and rifles, returned to the festively decorated venue. In
quick succession they shot and killed fourteen people and injured twenty-
two before fleeing the scene. After a dramatic car chase, the couple were
shot and killed by police. As it turned out, the attackers had left bags
with explosives in the building before the shooting spree.
According to FBI investigators Farook, a native U.S. citizen of
Pakistani descent, and his wife, born and raised in Pakistan, had com-
municated long before their engagement and marriage about the need
for jihad and the glory of martyrdom. As FBI Director James Comey put
it, the two perpetrators were “consuming poison on the Internet” and
both had become radicalized “before they started courting or dating each
other online” and “before the emergence of ISIL [ISIS].”65 Nevertheless,
before their attack Farook and Malik left Facebook messages pledging
their allegiance to ISIS leader al-Baghdadi; ISIS in turn declared the cou-
ple “soldiers of the caliphate.” The couple brought a baby into the world
knowing all along that the little girl would grow up without her parents.
Even more deadly was the mass shooting in Orlando’s Pulse Nightclub
on June 12, 2016, where Omar Mateen (age twenty-nine), a U.S.-born
citizen of Afghan descent, shot and killed forty-nine people and injured
Religious Terrorism 129
fifty-three more over a period of about three hours. Between his attacks,
Mateen called and talked to 9-1-1 operators, personnel at a local TV
station, and hostage negotiators of the Orlando police department. He
swore allegiance to ISIS leader al-Baghdadi, claimed that his attack was
in response to the recent killing of Abu Waheeb, a member of ISIS’s lead-
ership team, and, more generally, to American military intervention in
the Middle East. At one point, he answered a text message from his sec-
ond wife, who wondered where he was, by asking her whether she had
watched television. Eventually, Mateen was killed by a controlled explo-
sion set off by police.
Born on Long Island, New York, Mateen grew up in Florida, gradu-
ated from high school and earned an associate college degree in criminal
justice. Although born in the United States he seems not quite to fit in with
his peers. Like the perpetrator of the truck-ramming attack in New York
City, the Orlando mass shooter, a security guard well versed in handling
guns, was described by his former and second wife as an abusive husband
and by acquaintances and colleagues as a man with a volatile temper.
Not particularly religious during adolescence and young adulthood
Mateen became a very devout Muslim after the divorce from his first
wife, prayed regularly in his mosque, and went on a religious pilgrimage
to Saudi Arabia. However, neither family members nor acquaintances
remembered him expressing extremist views or mentioning ISIS.66
Contrary to the jihadis responsible for the deadly post-9/11 attacks
listed in Table 5.2, plus many more unsuccessful plotters, most Muslims
who were—and still are—fed up with U.S. military actions in Iraq,
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, and elsewhere do not become terrorists.
How, then, can one explain the radicalization of the relatively few?

Table 5.2 Post-9/11 Deadly Terrorism inside the United States by Jihadists

Year Incident Number of Fatalities

2017 New York Truck Ramming 8
2016 Orlando Nightclub Shooting 49
2015 Chattanooga Shooting 4
2015 San Bernardino Mass Shooting 14
2014 Washington and New Jersey Shooting 4
2014 Beheading in Oklahoma 1
2013 Boston Marathon Attack 4
2009 Little Rock Shooting 1
2009 Fort Hood Shooting 13
2006 Jewish Federation Attack in Seattle 1
2002 Los Angeles Airport 2
Lethal attacks through December 2018 101
Source: Various open sources
130 Terrorism
In a comprehensive study about homegrown jihadis in the United
States, Canada, and Western Europe in the post-9/11 years, the NYPD
identified the following four developmental stages in a distinct model of
radicalization:

•• Pre-radicalization refers to the life of individuals before they enter

into the process of radicalization. As the case studies showed, most
of the future terrorists lived ordinary lives, had ordinary private and
professional aspirations, and had no histories of violence.
•• Self-identification is the stage in which internal and external factors
cause individuals to become interested in and adopt jihadi ideology
as their own. In this phase, typically, they seek contacts with like-
minded people.
•• Indoctrination leads to the intensification of individuals’ embrace of
the justification for violent jihad. According to the NYPD report,
contrary to the self-identification stage, at this time “association with
like-minded people is an important factor as the process deepens.”
•• Jihadization, unlike the previous stages, tends to be a short process.
Here members of the cell accept the call of jihadi indoctrination, decide
to become “holy warriors,” and prepare to carry out terrorist acts.67

In the post-9/11 era, the Al Qaeda organization was the inspiration for
most homegrown jihadi terrorism plots but was rarely, if at all, directly
involved. However, the 2010 National Intelligence Estimate warned that
“al-Qa’ida maintains its intent to attack the Homeland—preferably with
a large-scale operation that would cause mass casualties, harm the US
economy, or both” and “retains the capability to recruit, train, and deploy
operatives to mount some kind of an attack against the Homeland.”68 If
not the original Al Qaeda organization or Al Qaeda Central, the group’s
Taliban allies may have had their hands in two terror plots inside the
United States in 2009 and 2010: The above-mentioned plotters of an
attack on New York City’s subway system and the would-be Times
Square bomber trained in Taliban-controlled areas in Pakistan. In the
case of the latter, the Pakistani Taliban actually claimed responsibility for
his failed car bombing. While Al Qaeda Central and/or the Taliban may
plot major attacks inside the United States, autonomous homegrown
cells and lone wolves pose probably a greater threat. One reason is that
the association with like-minded people that NYPD researchers found to
be an important factor in the radicalization process has shifted increas-
ingly from the actual contact to virtual association via the Internet. As
the NYPD analysis points out, “The Internet is a driver and enabler for
the process of radicalization.”69 Similarly, the U.S. Senate Committee
on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs cautioned that “as the
terrorists’ Internet campaign bypasses America’s physical borders and
undermines cultural barriers that previously served as a bulwark against
Religious Terrorism 131
al-Qaeda’s message of hate and violence, the threat of homegrown terrorist
attacks in the United States increases.”70
As the second decade of the twenty-first century progressed ISIS became
the predominant threat within the United States and in other Western
countries. The group’s leadership appealed relentlessly to sympathizers
to strike in their homeland against military, police, and civilians as well.
However, opinion surveys showed that the vast majority of Muslims
around the world had negative views about ISIS.71 As for Muslims in
America, when surveyed in 2017, 76 percent of Muslim respondents in
the United States said that the killing of civilians for political, social, or
religious causes is never justified compared to only 59 percent of the gen-
eral U.S. public. Similarly, 14 percent of the general public and 12 percent
of Muslim respondents said that for the same causes civilians can some-
times or often be killed. Among Muslims in the United States merely 17
percent believed that there was a great deal (6 percent) or a fair amount of
support for extremism among Muslims in America. However, within the
United States the threat by Muslim extremists was not greater than that
posed by right-wing extremists. In a report on violent extremism inside
the United States the Government Accountability Office (GAO) listed
deadly terrorist acts by jihadists and right-extremists from September 12,
2001, the day after 9/11, and December 31, 2016. Because the research-
ers included ambiguous cases such as the Washington, DC sniper attacks
and violence within families among terrorism carried out by Muslims,
they listed a total of twenty-three cases in which a total of 119 persons
were killed. Several mass shootings, namely the Orlando Nightclub mas-
sacre and the San Bernardino and Fort Hood attacks, accounted for most
of the victims (seventy-six). In comparison, right-extremists carried out
sixty-two terrorist attacks, nearly three times as many, killing a total of
102 people.72

Notes
1 Corey Kilgannon and Joseph Goldstein, “Sayfullo Saipov, the Suspect in the
New York Terror Attack and his Past,” New York Times, October 31, 2017,
www.nytimes.com/2017/10/31/nyregion/sayfullo-saipov-manhattan-truck-
attack.html, accessed December 1, 2018.
2 Mark Sedgwick, “Al-Qaeda and the Nature of Religious Terrorism,” Terrorism
and Political Violence 16:4 (Winter 2004): 808.
3 Magnus Ranstorp, “Terrorism in the Name of Religion,” working paper avail-
able from Columbia International Affairs Online, www.ciaonet.org.arugula.
cc.columbia.edu:2048/wps/ram01/index.html.
4 “Anti-Abortion Killer Executed,” CBS News, September 3, 2003, www.
cbsnews.com/stories/2003/09/04/national/main571515.shtml.
5 Excerpts are from Paul Hill, “Defending the Defenseless,” www.armyofgod.
com/PHill_ShortShot.html.
6 “Anti-Abortion Killer Executed.”
7 Ibid.
132 Terrorism
8 The transcript is available at www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/
paris-attackers-gave-interview-to-french-tv-station-we-are-defenders-of-the-
prophet-we-took-vengeance-said-cherif-kouachi-9969749.html, accessed
June 15, 2015.
9 Ehud Sprinzak, “Extremism and Violence in Israel: The Crisis of Messianic
Politics,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 555
(January 1998): 123.
10 Ibid., 120.
11 Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious
Violence (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 57.
12 Ibid., 54.
13 Sprinzak, 123.
14 The quote is from a report by ABC News on World News Sunday, February
27, 1994.
15 Ibid.
16 Albert Bandura, “Mechanisms of Moral Disengagement,” in Walter Reich,
ed., Origins of Terrorism: Psychologies, Ideologies, Theologies, States of
Mind (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 164.
17 Ibid., 174–75.
18 These terms are used by Juergensmeyer, chs. 8 and 9.
19 Ibid., 182–83.
20 Jessica Stern, Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill (New
York: HarperCollins, 2003), 167.
21 Ibid.
22 Audrey Kurth Cronin, “Behind the Curve: Globalization and International
Terrorism,” International Security 27:3 (Winter 2002/3): 42.
23 Stern, xxv.
24 Ibid.
25 David C. Rapoport, “The Fourth Wave: September 11 in the History of
Terrorism,” Current History (December 2001).
26 Sedgwick, 797.
27 Ibid.
28 Ibid., 805.
29 Juergensmeyer, 221.
30 Stern, xix.
31 This is what Terry Noble, a leader in a Christian Identity organization, told
Mark Juergensmeyer. See Juergensmeyer, 193.
32 Stern, xviii.
33 Ibid., 286.
34 Ibid., 285.
35 Juergensmeyer, 222.
36 Ranstorp, 8.
37 Colin Powell made this statement as guest of the NBC News program Meet
the Press on October 19, 2008.
38 Mark Juergensmeyer, “Religion as a Cause of Terrorism,” in Louise
Richardson, ed., The Roots of Terrorism (New York: Routledge, 2006), 134.
39 Jeff Stein, “Can You Tell a Sunni from a Shiite?” New York Times, October
17, 2006, www.nytimes.com/2006/10/17/opinion/17stein.html, accessed
December 6, 2008.
40 Vali Nasr, The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the
Future (New York: Norton, 2006), 34.
41 John L. Esposito, “Terrorism and the Rise of Political Islam,” in Richardson,
146.
42 Ibid., 147.
Religious Terrorism 133
43 The 9/11 Commission Report (New York: W.W. Norton, 2004), 466, footnote
11.
44 Ibid., 50.
45 “Al-Qa’ida’s Foreign Fighters in Iraq,” Harmony Project, Combating
Terrorism Center at West Point, http://ctc.usma.edu/harmony/pdf/CTCForeign
Fighter.19.Dec07.pdf.
46 Marc Sageman, Understanding Terror Networks (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 1.
47 Bruce Lawrence, Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden
(London: Verso, 2005), 107, 115.
48 This quote is from Esposito, 149.
49 Sageman, 2.
50 Esposito, 145.
51 William McCants and Jarret Brachman, “Militant Ideology Atlas,” Executive
Report compiled and published by the Combating Terrorism Center at
West Point.
52 The 9/11 Commission Report, 51.
53 Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (New
York: Knopf, 2006), 31.
54 Ibid., 37.
55 According to Youssef Aboul-Enein, “Sheik Abdel-Fatahl Al-Khalidi Revitalizes
Sayid Qutb,” West Point: The Combating Terrorism Center United States
Military Academy.
56 Excerpts are from Lawrence, Fox News, www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,
454624,00.html; and Information Clearing House, www.informationclearing
house.info/article11615.htm, accessed December 5, 2008.
57 I copied the above paragraphs from the full text of the announcement
linked to via the Long War Journal’s website www.longwarjournal.org/
archives/2014/06/isis_announces_formation_of_ca.php. However, by early
2018, the text was no longer available.
58 Sageman, 1.
59 Brynjar Lia, “Doctrines for Jihadi Terrorist Training,” Terrorism and Political
Violence 20:4 (October–December 2008): 537.
60 Alissa J. Rubin, “Despair Drives Suicide Attacks by Iraqi Women,” New
York Times, July 5, 2008, www.nytimes.com/2008/07/05/world/middleeast/
05diyala.html?sq=despair%20drives%20suicide%20attacks%20by%20
Iraqi%20Women&st=cse&scp=1&pagewanted=print.
61 Abdul Waheed Waffa, “10 Arrested for Afghan Acid Attack,” New York Times,
November 25, 2008, www.nytimes.com/2008/11/26/world/asia/26afghan.
html?scp=6&sq=taliban%20and%20school%20girls&st=cse,
accessed November 25, 2008.
62 Marc Sageman, Leaderless Jihad (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 2008), 98.
63 Brian M. Jenkins, “Outside Expert’s View,” in Mitchell D. Silber and Arvin
Bhatt, eds., Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat, New York
City Police Department Report, 2007, 14.
64 Andrea Elliott, Sabrina Tavernise, and Anne Barnard, “For Times Sq. Suspect,
Long Roots of Discontent,”New York Times, May 15, 2010, www.nytimes.
com/2010/05/16/nyregion/16suspect.html?sq=faisal%20shahzad%20
and%20times%20square&st=cse&scp=1&pagewanted=print, accessed June
8, 2010.
65 Al Baker and Marc Santora, “San Bernardino Attackers Discussed Jihad
in Private Messages, F.B.I. Says,” The New York Times, December 16,
2015.
134 Terrorism
66 There were claims by some sources that Mateen targeted the Pulse Nightclub
because it catered to gays and that he actually was a closeted gay man himself.
67 Silber and Bhatt, 6–7.
68 For the 2010 “Annual Threat Assessment of the Intelligence Community,”
see http://isis-online.org/uploads/conferences/documents/2010_NIE.pdf,
accessed June 10, 2010.
69 Silber and Bhatt, 8.
70 U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs,
“Violent Islamic Extremism, the Internet, and the Homegrown Terrorist
Threat,” May 8, 2008, 5.
71 Pew Research Center, “Muslims and Islam: Key Findings in the U.S. and
around the World,” August 9, 2017.
72 United States Government Accountability Office, “Countering Violent
Extremism,” April 2017, available at https://www.gao.gov/assets/690/683984.
pdf, accessed December 18, 2018.
6 The Making of Terrorists
Causes, Conditions, Influences

During a United Nations (UN) conference on poverty in March 2002,

President George W. Bush said that the United States was ready to chal-
lenge “the poverty and hopelessness and lack of education and failed
governments that too often allow conditions that terrorists can seize and
try to turn to their advantage.”1 A few months later, however, in an
interview with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the president suggested
otherwise when he stated that there was no direct link between poverty
and terrorism: “Poverty is a tool for recruitment amongst these global ter-
rorists,” Bush said. “It’s a way for them to recruit—perhaps. But poverty
doesn’t cause killers to exist, and it’s an important distinction to make.”2
No doubt, the president had the kind of terrorism in mind that had led to
the attacks on 9/11, but in expressing different assessments of the roots of
terrorism, he reflected the different viewpoints in the long-running expert
debate on this issue. There is no doubt that terrorism cannot be under-
stood without exploring the real and perceived grievances of groups and
individuals who resort to political violence. Grievances of this nature are
of a domestic or international nature—or both. But although the same or
similar conditions breed terrorists in some countries and not in others,
scholars have put forth a multitude of explanations.
The idea that socioeconomic conditions, such as poverty, lack of edu-
cation, and high unemployment, provide fertile ground for terrorism
pre-dates the rise of international terrorism in the last thirty-five years
or so and, more importantly, the recent focus on the roots of terror-
ism in Arab and Muslim countries. Based on his research examining the
lynching of black Americans in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by
whites and the economic conditions over a long period of time, Arthur
Raper concluded that the number of lynching attacks peaked in times of
economic downturns and subsided in years of economic improvement.3
But using more advanced economic indicators, other researchers did not
find a relationship between the ups and downs in lynching incidents and
economic conditions.4 For example, there was no surge in these attacks
during the Great Depression of the 1930s.
At first sight, the argument that poverty breeds terrorism also carries
little weight with respect to experiences in the West from the late 1960s
136 Terrorism
through the 1980s, when some of the world’s richest countries (e.g.,
Germany, Italy, France, Belgium, and the United States) produced a rela-
tively large number of very active terrorist groups of the left-wing variety.
The founders, leaders, and rank-and-file members of the most prominent
terrorist organizations during that period, from the Italian Red Brigades
to the German Red Army Faction (RAF) and the French Direct Action,
came typically from middle-class or upper-middle-class families and had
studied at universities. The same was true for left-wing terrorists in the
United States; many of them had finished college and earned professional
degrees (medicine, law, teaching, social work, etc.). But, as Brent Smith
and Kathryn Morgan found in their research, in the last decades of the
twentieth century, right-wing terrorists in the United States had very
different demographic characteristics than their left-wing counterparts:
One-third of the right-wingers had not graduated from high school, only
about 12 percent had a college degree, and a large number of them were
“unemployed or impoverished self-employed workers.”5 In other words,
the same society with the same macro-socioeconomic conditions pro-
duced one type of terrorist that came from the well-to-do segment of
society and another type from the lower socioeconomic strata.
Regardless of such findings, the idea that terrorism is the result of
“poverty, desperation, and resentment” in less developed countries
around the globe has survived as a plausible explanation in the search
for the causes of group-based political violence.6 However, statistical
evidence tells another story. As Walter Laqueur has pointed out, “In
the forty-nine countries currently designated by the United Nations as
the least developed, hardly any terrorist activity occurs.”7 Other recent
studies have contradicted the economic deprivation thesis with respect to
terrorism and terrorists in the Middle East. Claude Berrebi examined a
wealth of data on individual terrorists in the West Bank and Gaza, on the
general population in those areas, and on the economic conditions over
time. He concluded,

Both higher standards of living and higher levels of education are

positively associated with participation in Hamas or PIJ [Palestinian
Islamic Jihad]. With regard to the societal economic condition, I
could not find a sustainable link between terrorism and poverty and
education, and I interpret this to mean that there is either no link or
a very weak indirect link.8

Research by Alan B. Krueger and Jitka Maleckova came to similar con-

clusions with respect to the Lebanese Hezbollah; their evidence suggests
“that having a higher living standard above the poverty line or a second-
ary school or higher education is positively associated with participation
in Hezbollah.”9 The same research also found “that Israeli Jewish set-
tlers who attacked Palestinians in the West Bank in the early 1980s
The Making of Terrorists 137
were overwhelmingly from high-paying occupations.”10 Like Berrebi,
Krueger and Maleckova found no evidence for a direct causal relation-
ship between poverty and education on the one hand and participation
in or support of terrorism on the other.
Focusing on militants in the Lebanese Hezbollah organization who
had already undertaken or were willing to carry out suicide missions, one
researcher found that most of these terrorists or would-be terrorists “are
from poor families” and “geoculturally immobile.”11 But in the absence
of in-depth comparisons between the living standard of the population at
large and actual or would-be suicide bombers, the meaning of “poor” in
this context is not quite clear. Perhaps Berrebi’s research explains the dif-
ferent findings: With respect to the Palestinian groups he studied, Berrebi
found that suicide bombers came from higher economic circumstances
and had a higher education than the population at large but came “from
lower socio-economic groups when compared to other, non-suicidal, ter-
rorists.”12 Based on his empirical data analysis, James A. Piazza did not
find evidence for what he calls the “rooted-in-poverty thesis” at all.13
These findings have profound implications for policy-makers in their
fight to attack the roots of terrorism. If indeed economic and educational
conditions do not cause terrorism, efforts to improve economic condi-
tions, especially individual incomes, living conditions, health care, and
educational opportunities, would not decrease the number of terrorists
and their supporters or do away with terrorism altogether. But so far,
policies continue to be guided in many instances by the assumption that
aid to improve the economic circumstances of countries or regions is part
of prudent counterterrorism strategy. Thus, in the spring of 2009, when
the Taliban ally of Al Qaeda gained territorial control in Pakistan and
intensified its violence in both that country and Afghanistan, the Obama
administration pushed for a massive U.S. aid package that in part aimed
at financing school, hospital, and road projects in the Taliban stronghold
of Swat Valley and similarly contested regions in Pakistan.
It has been argued that changes in the content of education would be
a more promising way to go. In her examination of textbooks, teachers’
guides, and other official material used in schools on the West Bank and
in Gaza, Daphne Burdman found that

Palestinian children are urged to violent actions against Israelis even

when it is likely that they will be injured or die. They are encouraged
to desire rather than fear the circumstances, because they will find a
place in Paradise with Allah.14

Like Burdman, Berrebi has suggested that efforts to reduce terrorism

should focus on changes in the curriculum for children on the West Bank
and in Gaza. Similar issues have arisen with respect to other countries
and regions. For example, in the aftermath of 9/11, there were reports
138 Terrorism
about and criticism of schools and textbooks in Saudi Arabia that encour-
aged intolerance and hate against non-Muslims. Similar indoctrination of
the young was reportedly practiced in Islamic schools in North America
and other parts of the world that received financial support from Saudi
Arabia. Students of an Islamic school in northern Virginia told a reporter
that some of their teachers “teach students that whatever is kuffar [non-
Muslim], it is okay to hurt or steal from that person.”15
But while propaganda of hate might well condition its receivers to
support and even commit political violence, it is far from clear, how-
ever, whether removing hateful texts and indoctrination from schools
would reduce terrorism significantly or eradicate it. After all, terrorism
has flourished in all kinds of environments—in democratic and non-
democratic societies, in settings where young people were and were not
indoctrinated into committing violence. Some scholars, among them Ted
Gurr, consider liberal democracies less vulnerable to political violence
than authoritarian systems because dissent and conflict can be brought
into the legitimate political process. Indeed, Gurr’s research indicates
that repressive regimes have a higher incidence of political violence than
liberal democratic settings.16 But after analyzing global data on terrorist
incidents from 1980 through 1987 with respect to the sites of terrorist
strikes and the nationality of attackers and victims, William Eubank and
Leonard Weinberg concluded that during the 1980s “terrorist violence
was far more common in stable democracies than in autocratic settings”
and that the perpetrators and the victims of terrorism were more likely to
be the citizens of stable democracies than of less stable or partial democ-
racies and of countries with limited authoritarianism or absolutism.17
How can one explain such contradictory findings? The most plausible
explanations point to the fact that the two research projects covered dif-
ferent time periods and, more importantly, focused in the first case on
domestic terrorism data and in the second case on international terrorism
data. Both explanations seem reasonable. Citizens who live in countries
with repressive regimes have more reasons to use violence against the rul-
ing clique, but in the absence of civil liberties, it is likely that the authorities
detect and crush opposition groups that have committed, or plan to com-
mit, terrorism. If terrorist acts do occur in closed societies, the targeted
governments have the means to prevent, curb, or spin the news coverage of
such events. Democracies offer citizens opportunities to participate in the
decision-making process, but when groups or individuals conclude that
their grievances are not adequately addressed, they may be more inclined
to resort to violence than their counterparts under authoritarian rule—if
only because the free press will spread their “propaganda of the deed.”
However, according to Piazza’s research there are also variables
that transcend the peculiarities of political systems and serve as impor-
tant predictors of terrorism, namely, “population [size, historical
development], ethno-religious diversity, increased state repression and,
most significantly, the structure of party politics.”18
The Making of Terrorists 139
All of this leads to the conclusion that terrorists emerge in poor and
in rich countries, in democratic and in authoritarian states, in stable and
in nonstable countries, and in societies whose textbooks teach or do not
teach hate of other ideological, religious, or ethnic groups.
In the absence of a universal model that identifies the conditions that
breed group-based political violence and terrorists, experts in the field
have looked beyond the environmental conditions for other explanations.
If some groups and movements remain nonviolent in spite of unaddressed
political grievances and others decide to embrace violent tactics, then
group dynamics, decision-making processes, and leader–follower relation-
ships might explain the differences. Similarly, if some individuals under
the same or similar conditions become terrorists while others do not, it is
not far-fetched to suspect that an individual’s traits and experiences affect,
or even determine, whether he or she selects or rejects the terrorist path.
Terrorism scholars are not of one mind in this respect, but have proposed
different approaches and explanations, among them the following: (1) ter-
rorists make rational choices, (2) terrorists are guided by personal traits
and experiences, and (3) terrorists are the products of social interaction.

Terrorism as a Result of Rational Choice

Borrowing from the Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz, who
noted that war is the continuation of diplomacy, Gary Sick has suggested
that terrorism “is the continuation of politics by other means.”19 While not
discounting the possibility that persons with a predisposition to violence
and fanatic beliefs are especially drawn to terrorism, Sick emphasizes that
terrorism is the result of a deliberate choice made in particular political
environments—at least in the early stage of a group’s life span. “Their
[group members’] choice of terrorism, as opposed to other possible forms
of [political] behavior, is a function of the political environment,” he
writes. For Richard Shultz, too, terrorism “is calculated violence” that is
“goal directed” and “employed in pursuit of political objectives.”20 In her
exploration of terrorism as a logical choice, Martha Crenshaw concurs
when she states that “Terrorism is likely to be a reasonably informed
choice among available alternatives, some tried unsuccessfully.”21
Thus, the Weathermen group in the United States was formed when its
founders concluded that the anti-Vietnam War, anti-authority protests
staged by the Students for a Democratic Society did not further their
ideological goals. Similarly, the RAF in Germany emerged as the radical
offspring of the Socialist Student Association. The Army of God, and
other extreme antiabortion groups that resorted to terrorist methods,
emerged and grew when its founders and recruits determined that the
mainstream pro-life movement’s attempts to work within the legitimate
political process to outlaw legalized abortions were in vain.
Based on many years of research, Ehud Sprinzak rejected the notion of
terrorists as psychologically challenged types or crazies and concluded,
140 Terrorism
“Terrorism is not the product of mentally deranged persons. Terrorism,
and ideological terrorism in particular, is a political phenomenon par
excellence and is therefore explicable in political terms.”22 On this count,
Christopher Harmon agrees with Sprinzak and discards the notion of
terrorist acts as mindless, stating,

It is mostly on the surface that terrorism appears to be madness, or

mindless. Behind the screaming and the blood there lies a controlling
purpose, a motive, usually based in politics or something close to it,
such as a drive for political or social change inspired by religion.
The terrorist is not usually insane; he or she is more usually “crazy
like a fox.”23

If terrorism is not committed by crazies, is this sort of political violence

the result of rational decisions that individuals and groups make? That
begs the question whether economic analysis and particularly rational
choice theory are helpful in determining whether groups and individu-
als act rationally when they decide whether or not to engage in terrorist
activity—and what kind of terrorism. Underscoring the relevance of the
rational choice model in terrorism studies Bryan Caplan distinguishes
between three types of individuals:

•• Sympathizers who are not involved in violence;

•• Active terrorists who belong to terrorist groups;
•• Suicide terrorists who are willing to die.

He measures the rationality or irrationality of these three types by

their “responsiveness to incentives, narrow-self-interest, and rational
expectations.”24
When calculating and assessing incentives to commit violence or not,
all three types tend to make rational choices. Active terrorists and sui-
cide bombers are guided by their commitment to their terrorist group.
In the absence of nonviolent incentives, attacking the enemy is a rational
choice; for the suicide bomber and his or her group this mode of attack
is cost-effective and has a high rate of success as measured by the number
of fatalities and inflicted damage (see also Chapter 8). If no risks were
involved in carrying out violent attacks, terrorist sympathizers would
become active terrorists as well.
The inactive sympathizer is most likely also guided by self-interest, is
removed from group dynamics, and has rational expectations of the con-
sequences of violence. Thus, for Caplan the sympathizer “deviates only
slightly from homo economicus.”25 In the same assessment, active terror-
ists come “probably close” to making rational choices in terms of narrow
self-interest and rational expectations in their conviction that they will
not die but succeed. In contrast, suicide bombers seem not rational on
both narrow self-interest and rational expectations. How can it be in
The Making of Terrorists 141
one’s self-interest to die in order to kill others? And, since most suicide
terrorists tend to be of the religious variety, how can it be a rational
expectation to be rewarded in the after-life? Still, even suicide bombers
fit one of Caplan’s three rational choice criteria.
Recognizing that terrorists have “short-term organizational objectives
and long-term political objectives,” Louise Richardson characterized the
more immediate or “secondary motives” as the “Three Rs” for “revenge,
renown, and reaction.”26 No doubt, revenge for real or perceived injus-
tice and humiliation, renown in the sense of obtaining publicity and
glory, and the wish for reaction and overreaction on the part of their
targets are common motives of all kinds of terrorist groups. In deciding
to pursue the goals that Richardson calls the “Three Rs,” terrorists pre-
sumably make some rational decisions.
The notion that terrorism is political in nature, goal oriented, and the
result of rational or logical choices among several alternatives fits into
the instrumental paradigm that recognizes terrorism as a means to spe-
cific political ends, such as removing foreign influence from a country or
region, the removal of a regime, or national independence.27

Terrorism as a Result of Personal Traits and Experiences

Jerrold Post takes issue with the suggestion that terrorism is the result of
rational choices made by the perpetrators of political violence. Instead,
he argues that “political terrorists are driven to commit acts of violence
as a consequence of psychological forces.”28 Based on his interviews with
terrorists as well as memoirs and court records, Post suggests that “peo-
ple with particular traits and tendencies are drawn disproportionately to
terrorist careers.”29 A study of the background of 227 left-wing terrorists,
most of them active in the Baader-Meinhof group or RAF, confirmed the
idea that particular experiences and personality traits make some people
more prone to become involved with terrorism than others. In the case of
German left-wing terrorists, researchers found the following:

No less than 69 percent of the men and 52 percent of the women

reportedly had clashes with parents, schools, or employers—33 per-
cent with their parents, 18 percent with employers—or prior records
of criminal or juvenile offenses, many of them repeated entries.
Although there are no exact population averages or control groups
with which to compare, the percentages are so large as to suggest in
many cases a conflict-ridden youth aggravated by parental death,
divorce, remarriage and other misfortunes of modern society.30

Konrad Kellen described this type of background using the example of

Hans Joachim Klein, an eventual defector from the RAF. As a small boy
and teenager, Klein was constantly mistreated and beaten by his father.
According to Kellen,
142 Terrorism
When Klein was in his teens, a girlfriend gave him a small chain to
wear around his neck; the father ripped the chain off and beat him
once again. Suddenly, however, young Klein rebelled and slapped his
father’s face, expecting to be killed a moment later for his transgres-
sion. But the old man treated his son with courtesy and respect from
that moment on! The lesson for the younger Klein was probably that
force and the infliction of pain can do the trick . . . Presumably Klein
concluded, at some level, that if he could do this to his father, he
could do it to the state as well.31

Despite the fact that many left-wing German terrorists had troubled
backgrounds, Merkl has argued that “every German terrorist could just
as well have turned away from terrorism, being a creature endowed with
free will; and some did.”32 But what Jeffrey Ross has called individuals’
“facilitating traits,” such as alienation, depression, or antisocial behav-
ior, may drive persons to join terrorist movements—especially when a
particular group setting gives them for the first time in their lives the
feeling that they belong, that they count.33 Randy Borum takes a sensible
in-between position by concluding that “certain life experiences tend to
be commonly found among terrorists” and

Histories of childhood abuse and trauma appear to be wide-

spread . . . None of these contribute much to a causal explanation
of terrorism, but may be seen as markers of vulnerability, as possible
sources of motivation, or as mechanism for acquiring or hardening
one’s militant ideology.34

If one believes that terrorists are steered by their personal traits and a
“special psycho-logic [that] is constructed to rationalize acts they are
psychologically compelled to commit,” as Post suggests, the instrumen-
tal paradigm falls on its face: Terrorism is not seen as the means to a
particular political end, as a way to further one’s political causes; rather,
terrorism is the end itself, or, as Post puts it, “Individuals become ter-
rorists in order to join terrorist groups and commit acts of terrorism.”35

Risk Factors in the Making of Violent Extremists

Childhood trauma, adolescent behavior, and personal traits as risk
factors in the making of violent extremists do not merely apply to
left-extremists like members of the German RAF. A study based
on extensive interviews with forty-four former White Supremacists
(thirty-eight males and six females from fifteen U.S. states) revealed
severe childhood trauma in that
The Making of Terrorists 143
•• 43 percent experienced childhood physical abuse;
•• 23 percent experienced adolescent sexual abuse;
•• 41 percent experienced physical neglect;
•• 36 percent experienced parental abandonment;
•• 54 percent witnessed serious violence;
•• 48 percent had mental health problems;
•• 73 percent had abused alcohol and illegal drugs during
adolescence.

As the researchers noted, these childhood experiences and adolescent

behavioral problems by far exceeded those in the general population.36
Similarly, based on their in-depth case studies of fifty-one per-
sons in the Netherlands who tried in vain or were successful in
joining jihadist groups abroad between 2000 and 2013, three Dutch
researchers found that seventeen of the fifty-one had “a criminal
history in petty theft, violence, burglary, and in some cases extor-
tion and possession of child pornography.”37 This research revealed
furthermore that psychological problems were far more prevalent
among those trying to become jihadists in the years from 2011 to
2013 than in the preceding time period. Thus, six of fifteen jihadists
or would-be jihadists in those years had “mental issues according to
health care professionals, varying from moderate mental instability
to serious psychiatric disorders.”38 While this relatively small sam-
ple may not allow us to use these and other findings to generalize,
it is nevertheless an interesting result.

Terrorism as a Result of Social Interaction

In her studies of members of the Italian Red Brigades, Donatella della Porta
found that social interaction and social ties, not personal traits, explain
why individuals join terrorist groups. Della Porta’s research revealed that

In as many as 88 percent of the cases in which the nature of the tie

with the recruiter is known, she or he is no stranger; in 44 percent, she
or he is a personal friend; and in 20 percent, she or he is a relative.39

Similarly, a study of Lebanese Shi’ite terrorists established that they were

“recruited by and from the concentric circles of kinship, friendship, or
fellowship.”40 That is precisely what Marc Sageman found when he ana-
lyzed the personal background of 172 members of the global Salafi jihad
movement, including Al Qaeda as its vanguard.41 There was no evidence
that these jihadis were brainwashed and enlisted by distinct recruiting
efforts; rather, the key was, according to Sageman,
144 Terrorism
Social affiliation through friendship, kinship, and discipleship; pro-
gressive intensification of beliefs and faith leading to the acceptance
of the global Salafi jihad ideology; and formal acceptance to the jihad
through the encounter of a link to the jihad.42

And then there are terrorist organizations that provide social services in
communities that otherwise would not have health care, schools, or secu-
rity forces. The Lebanese Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas are good
examples of groups that consist of a community service arm, a politi-
cal branch, and a terrorist corps. By coming to the aid of needy people
in their communities, these organizations create large reservoirs for the
recruitment of terrorists—especially in their religious schools. Potential
recruits are often chosen at a very young age and well before they them-
selves have decided to become a terrorist. Instead, they are groomed
for their future role. According to Loretta Napoleoni, “People are not
only carefully selected, their background is analyzed minutely, and every
single detail is taken into consideration. If a candidate is judged to be
suitable, he is indoctrinated, fed a special diet of religion, spiritualism
and violence.”43 In the last several years, Western Europe has become
an especially fertile breeding ground of new jihadis—young members of
the Muslim diaspora who are disillusioned and alienated from the socie-
ties they live in. Whether in London or Birmingham, Paris or Marseilles,
Berlin or Cologne, and many other communities in the United Kingdom,
France, Germany, and neighboring countries, some of these Muslim new-
comers are likely to seek out and become part of social networks of fel-
low Muslims, where they join friends, relatives, or acquaintances. While
pointing out that “the history of radical Islamism and the terrorist cells
in Western Europe remains to be written,” Walter Laqueur was neverthe-
less certain about one aspect:

Hate and Violence as Addiction

Interestingly, when racial, ethnic, and/or religious supremacy
perceptions and intensive hate for the “other” inform an in-
group’s causes and its members’ identities, group members might
become consumed by hate and everything that magnifies related
feelings. Ku Klux Klan or Neo-Nazi entities, for example, fit the
profile of hate groups. Research suggests that hard-core White
Supremacists become addicted to hate and the symbols and
expressions of hate to such a degree that they remain vulnerable to
relapse just like recovering alcoholics long after they have sworn
off their hatefulness and left their groups. In extensive interviews
with eighty-nine former White Supremacists in the United States
The Making of Terrorists 145
more than one-third of the interviewees described hate as a form
of addiction; 62 percent revealed some kind of relapse after they
had left groups.44 One woman told researchers,

Somebody needs to do a study . . . subject us to the [white

power] music, to the literature, to the racial slurs and watch
what fires in our brains. I guarantee you it’s an addiction. I can
listen to white power music and within a week be back to that
mindset. I know it.45

It is entirely possible that this hate addiction is present in other

extremist and violent groups.

The idea that over time a European Islam would develop that was
more liberal and open seemed to have been premature at the very
least. As a result a new generation grew up who were artificially
assimilated and in large part deeply disaffected. Among these sec-
tions the preachers of jihad found their followers.46

But in his review of the relevant research, Malise Ruthven found evi-
dence that neither alienation nor the embrace of religious and ideo-
logical extremism are the driving forces behind the establishment of
terrorist jihadi cells. Instead, “the people who form terror groups have
to know and trust one another. In most Muslim societies it is kin-
ship, rather than shared ideological values, that generates relations
of trust.”47

Differences between Leaders and Followers

Today, when it comes to the making of terrorists, there may well be
distinct differences between leaders and the second-tier activist strata on
the one hand and rank-and-file followers and sympathizers on the other
hand. It seems that those who decide in the first place to form a group
in order to achieve their objectives by carrying out violence consider the
alternatives, weigh their opportunities and challenges, and jump into
action because of certain events or developments or opportunities. These
are the people with strong ideological convictions regardless of whether
these are of the secular or religious variety. Typically, the leadership
cadre came together through personal contacts in the past, and it still
does so in the age of digital communication. Here kinship and friendship
are still the keys.
146 Terrorism
Those who eventually join may sympathize with and admire the
group’s leaders and actions, demands, and goals but may be far less
informed about the ideological and operational underpinnings than the
leadership and operator strata.
Take the example of the Islamic State. Its leaders, all Sunnis, discussed the
blueprint for the organization at great length and detail while imprisoned in
a U.S.-run detention facility in Iraq. Once free and upset about the mistreat-
ment of Sunnis by the Shi’ite-controlled central government in Baghdad, these
men built their organization according to plan with a priority given to the
formation of a most brutal jihadi force and a mighty propaganda machine.
But even as the Islamic State’s reach expanded and tens of thousands
of men and women traveled to ISIS-controlled territory, most of these
supporters had merely rudimentary knowledge of the group’s religious
orthodoxy and related political convictions.
After interviewing radicalized Muslim teenagers in the suburbs of Paris
a French journalist concluded,

They knew very little about religion. They had hardly read a book
and they learnt jihad before religion. They’d tell me, ‘You think with
your head, we think with our hearts.’ They had a romantic view of
radicalism. I wondered how that happened.48

Social media posts revealed that young ISIS devotees have great admi-
ration for the Islamic State and its jihadists, not unlike the sentiments
displayed by fans of sports clubs and stars in the entertainment world.
The Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines “fan” as “an enthusi-
astic devotee (as of a sport or a performing art) usually as a spectator”
and “an ardent admirer or enthusiast (as of a celebrity or a pursuit).”
When adding, according to the same dictionary source, that the term
“fan” is probably a short form for “fanatic,” it makes sense to consider
these young Muslims in the West as part of a virtual fandom commu-
nity similar to fanatic fan groups devoted to sports teams, pop bands, or
Hollywood celebrities. Based on their analysis of Twitter data concerning
the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest, Tim Highfield, Stephen Harrington,
and Axel Bruns characterized “Twitter as an important new medium
facilitating the connection and communion of fans.”49
This point may help to explain the making of ISIS fans, radicalized
supporters, and eventual recruits under the influence of online propa-
ganda and social media interactions (see also Chapter 15).

The Lone Wolf Phenomenon

In September 1901, President William McKinley was assassinated by Leon
Czolgosz, a self-described anarchist who was radicalized by anarchist
newspapers and prominent anarchist individuals who in their writings
and speeches called for violence against the powerful. Czolgosz acted
The Making of Terrorists 147
alone. He was not a member of an extremist organization; he was an
early lone wolf. In April 1995, Timothy McVeigh detonated a powerful
car bomb in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma
City killing 168 persons and injuring many, many more. He was radical-
ized by antigovernment and Neo-Nazi books and regular visits to gun
shows. He acted alone, although he had an accomplice as he prepared
his home-made killer bomb. McVeigh was not a member of an extremist
organization; he was a lone wolf. In the more than nine decades between
these incidents, there were many more solo attacks.
Yet, while lone wolf terrorism is not a new phenomenon, there has
been a dramatic increase of cases in which one individual or a pair car-
ried out political violence against civilians or noncombatants. Jeffrey D.
Simon points to “the key role that technology, particularly the Internet,
is playing in the rise of the lone wolf” and the need “to revise our think-
ing about terrorism and shift away from an almost exclusive focus on
terrorist groups and organizations toward a new appreciation for the
importance of individual terrorists.”50
Yes, indeed, the spread of hate, violent messages, and calls for individ-
uals to carry out political violence via the Internet reaches far more people
in far more places around the globe than did terrorist propaganda before
the digital age. Thus, we do have many more lone wolves than at any
other time. As detailed in Chapter 15, social media in particular has been
instrumental in radicalizing and recruiting individuals who may or may
not team up with one, two, or three persons they are close to. Think of the
Boston Marathon Bombing: Internet posts introduced Tamerlan Tsarnaev
to the grievances of jihadists and their appeals to attack Westerners in
their own environment. He downloaded detailed instructions for prepar-
ing pressure-cooker bombs from Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’s
online magazine Inspire. And, finally, he recruited his younger brother
who joined him in their deadly attack in the heart of Boston.
Whether anarchist Czolgosz, antigovernment extremist McVeigh, the
jihadist Tsarnaev brothers, or the right-extremist nativist Anders Breivik
who, in 2011, killed seventy-six people in Norway in an unspeakable
killing spree in the name of defending Christian Europe against Islamic
invaders, they all were infected by viruses of hate spread by whatever was
the latest communication technology of their times. While they were loners,
they bought into extremist ideologies and acted according to the respective
movements’ propaganda—nowadays most prevalent on social media.
Terrorism expert Brian Jenkins made this very point. Noting before
the rise of ISIS that “two-thirds of the homegrown al Qaeda-inspired
terrorist plots in the United States since 9/11 have involved a single indi-
vidual,” he concluded,

The term lone wolf would apply to only a few of these terrorist plot-
ters. The behavior of many resembles more that of stray dogs. They
sniffed at the edges of al Qaeda extremist ideology, participated
148 Terrorism
vicariously in its online jihad, exhorting each other to action, care-
lessly throwing down threats, boasting of their prowess as warriors,
of the heroic deeds they were ready to perform, barking, showing their
teeth, hesitating, then darting forward until ensnared by the law.51

The Lack of a Universal Terrorist Profile

But when everything is said and done, it seems impossible to understand
the roots of particular kinds of terrorism without considering the real
or perceived political, socioeconomic, or religious grievances that feed
into the formation of terrorist ideologies and serve as justifications for
terrorist acts. “However impoverished and reduced it may be,” Michel
Wieviorka wrote, “there is always an ideology underlying a terrorist
action.”52 This may be more the case for the founding fathers and moth-
ers of terrorist groups than for the rank-and-file members. But in order to
function and flourish, the founders and their heirs must translate real or
perceived grievances into an ideological framework or mission statement.
According to Jessica Stern,

The most important aspect of organization is the mission. The mis-

sion is the story about Us versus Them. It distinguishes the pure from
the impure and creates group identity. The organization’s mission
statement—the story about its raison d’être—is the glue that holds
even the most tenuous organizations together.53

The Stages Leading to Terrorism

Terrorism is rarely, if ever, the result of a sudden impulse. People do not
become terrorists on the spur of the moment. Groups and individuals
resort to political violence when they make the move into the last stage of
a process. By distinguishing between social movements, antimovements,
and terrorism, Wieviorka recognized different types of opposition group-
ings with different degrees of resistance to the existing power or powers
and different courses of action coupled with their possible transitions
from one type to another.54 Similarly, Ehud Sprinzak identified three
stages in liberal democracies—from strong opposition to intense opposi-
tion (with protests and even small-scale violence) to outright terrorist
activity: (1) crisis of confidence, (2) conflict of legitimization, and (3) cri-
sis of legitimacy.55 Once a group enters into the last stage, its grievances
turn increasingly into intense hate of the enemy, who is dehumanized.
“The regime and its accomplices are now portrayed as ‘things,’ ‘dogs,’
‘pigs,’ ‘Nazis,’ or ‘terrorists.’ The portrayal is not accidental and occa-
sional but repeated and systematic.”56 This pattern of dehumanizing the
enemy applies to all types of terrorist groups—those on the extreme left
and those on the extreme right; those who have extreme racist and reli-
gious views. Because of his Vietnam policy, President Lyndon B. Johnson
The Making of Terrorists 149
was called “baby killer” by the most extreme voices in the radical left of
the 1960s; after the events at Waco, Texas, right-wing extremists called
federal agents “baby killers” and Attorney General Janet Reno “butcher
of Waco.” Members of the German RAF also moved gradually into the
last motivational stage. According to Merkl,

Once an enemy had been declared and made into the absolute moral
evil, the world became simple, and any means were justified for fight-
ing this evil. Soon the ‘struggle’ itself became the goal, and this in
turn could satisfy deep personal needs.57

A member of the Italian Red Brigades explained the terrorist mindset and
motivation when in search of a victim this way:

Then you have singled out your victim; he is physically there; he is

the one to be blamed for everything. In that moment there is already
the logic of the trial in which you have already decided that he is
guilty; you only have to decide about his punishment. So you have a
very “emphatic” sense of justice; you punish him not only for what
he has done but also for all the rest. Then, you don’t care anymore
which responsibilities that person has; you give him them all . . . he
is only a small part of the machine that is going to destroy all of us.58

Expressing his hatred of Israelis, one Arab terrorist said, “You Israelis
are Nazis in your souls and in your conduct . . . Given this kind of con-
duct, there is no choice but to strike at you without mercy in every possi-
ble way.”59 In defense of suicide missions, an Islamic terrorist said, “This
is not suicide. Suicide is selfish, it is weak, it is mentally disturbed. This is
istishad (martyrdom or self-sacrifice in the service of Allah).”60
First dehumanization, then the justification of killing as morally and
religiously justified, are part of what Albert Bandura describes as a
mechanism of moral disengagement on the part of groups that decide to
commit terrorism:

One set of disengagement practices operates on the construal of the

behavior itself. People do not ordinarily engage in reprehensible
conduct until they have justified to themselves the morality of their
actions. What is culpable can be made honorable through cognitive
reconstrual. In this process, destructive conduct is made personally
and socially acceptable by portraying it in the service of moral pur-
poses. People then act on a moral imperative.61

Another way to trace the process of radicalization of terrorists is the

one described in Chapter 5 developed especially to trace the mak-
ing of jihadis who are born in or immigrated to Western countries.
It is possible and indeed likely to fit the moral disengagement and
150 Terrorism
dehumanization processes into the four stages of jihadi radicalization.
And, vice versa, essential parts of those stages may be well suited to
explain the radicalization stages of non-Muslims who turn into reli-
gious or secular terrorists.
In examining the causes of terrorism, Martha Crenshaw distinguishes
between two major factors: (1) the preconditions that are at the heart
of political, socioeconomic, or religious grievances felt by societal sub-
groups; and (2) the precipitants or specific events that trigger terrorist
acts.62 This twofold causation (see Table 6.1) can be traced with respect
to most, if not all, groups or individuals who perpetrate terrorism.
Although this chapter has discussed at some length the underlying polit-
ical and personal circumstances as causes of terrorism, trigger events
need further explanation. Typically, military or other violent govern-
ment actions, often reactions to nonviolent or violent dissent, serve
as catalysts for the formation of terrorist groups. Thus, brutal police
actions against protesters during the Democratic Party’s 1968 National
Convention in Chicago triggered the formation of the Weathermen.
One year earlier, the killing of a German student (Benno Ohnesorg) by
the police during a demonstration in West Berlin against a visit of the
Shah of Iran triggered massive student demonstrations as the prelude
to the formation of the RAF. The defeat of the Arab states by Israel in
the 1967 war became the precipitant for the formation of Palestinian
terrorist groups, just as the first Persian Gulf War in 1991 and the use
of Saudi Arabian bases by the U.S. military influenced the emergence of
bin Laden’s Al Qaeda terrorist organization. Even the terrorist actions
of lone wolves can be associated with trigger events. For example, the
1993 inferno at Waco, Texas, hardened the antigovernment feeling
of American right-wing groups and was the trigger event for Timothy
McVeigh, who was responsible for the Oklahoma City bombing on the
second anniversary of the events at Waco.
The would-be Times Square bomber was affected by such a particular
event. In tracing Faisal Shahzad’s road to terrorism, Andrea Elliott wrote,

As dawn broke on July 10, 2007, Pakistani commandos stormed the

Red Mosque in Islamabad, ending a lengthy standoff with armed
militants in a blaze of gunfire that left more than 100 dead. In
Washington, officials applauded the siege as an important demon-
stration of Pakistan’s willingness to confront Islamist militants.
Yet Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani immigrant living in Connecticut,
was outraged. He had prayed at the Red Mosque during visits
home . . . The episode was pivotal for Mr. Shahzad, setting him on
a course to join a militant Pakistani group that would train him
in explosives and bankroll his plot to strike at Times Square last
month . . . “That was the triggering event,” said a person familiar
with the case.63
The Making of Terrorists 151
Table 6.1 Causes of Terrorism/Formation of Terrorist Groups

Preconditions Trigger Events

Grievances Domestic, international, or both

Reactions: Reactions:
Articulation of dissent and Most radical individuals split from larger
ideological differences opposition segment
Alienation from those in power Core of leaders forms group for the
Nonviolent protests purpose of more militant action:
Possibly some violence terrorfare
Recruitment of members Securing of resources (weapons, finances,
hideouts, etc.)
Dehumanization of the enemy and Result: Terrorist acts
moral disengagement
Source: Author

The Roots of Terrorism: No Simple Answers

Recognizing a whole range of causes for the emergence of terrorism
and the difficulty of identifying one or a few predominant ones, Jessica
Stern wrote,

I have come to see terrorism as a kind of virus, which spreads as a

result of risk factors at various levels: global, interstate, national,
and personal. But identifying these factors precisely is difficult. The
same variables (political, religious, social, or all of the above) that
seem to cause one person to become a terrorist might cause another
to become a saint.64

Taken together, then, a variety of political, socioeconomic, and religious

motives combined with personal conditions and trigger events provide
merely clues for understanding the making of terrorists and the formation
of terrorist groups, the motivations of individual recruits, and the decisions
to commence violent campaigns. Also, there may be distinct differences
between group founders and leaders on the one hand and rank-and-file
members and lone like-minded autonomous cells and lone wolves on the
other hand. In the absence of a predominant causal model, it is always dif-
ficult for target societies to comprehend fully the complex causes of a par-
ticular terrorist threat and more thorny yet to attack the roots of terrorism.

Notes
1 “Bush Ties Foreign Aid to Reform,” CBSNews.com, March 22, 2002, www.
cbsnews.com/stories/2002/03/21/politics/printable/504248.shtml, accessed
June 30, 2003.
152 Terrorism
2 Jeffrey Donovan, “U.S.: Analysts See Weak Link between Poverty and
Terrorism,” www.rferl.org/nca/features/2002/11/27112002205339.asp,
accessed June 29, 2003.
3 Arthur Raper, “The Tragedy of Lynching,” Patterson Smith Reprint Series
in Criminology, Law Enforcement, and Social Problems, Publication no. 25
(Montclair, NJ: Patterson Smith, 1969; originally published 1933).
4 C. Hovland and R. Sears, “Minor Studies of Aggression: Correlation of
Lynchings with Economic Indices,” Journal of Psychology 9 (1940): 301–10.
5 Brent L. Smith and Kathryn D. Morgan, “Terrorists Right and Left: Empirical
Issues in Profiling American Terrorists,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism
17:1 (January–March 1994): 51.
6 See Allen Hammond, “Economic Distress Motivates Terrorists,” in Laura K.
Egendorf, ed., Terrorism: Opposing Viewpoints (San Diego, CA: Greenhaven
Press, 2000), 77.
7 Walter Laqueur, No End to War: Terrorism in the Twenty-First Century (New
York: Continuum, 2003), 15. The list of the world’s least developed countries
was based on several criteria: low per capita income, weak human resources,
and low-level economic diversification.
8 Claude Berrebi, “Evidence about the Link between Education, Poverty, and
Terrorism among Palestinians,” unpublished paper, 2003, 1.
9 Alan B. Krueger and Jitka Maleckova, “Education, Poverty and Terrorism,”
unpublished paper, 2002, 1.
10 Ibid.
11 Ayla Schbley, “Defining Religious Terrorism: A Causal and Anthological
Profile,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 26:2 (March–April 2003): 119.
12 Berrebi, 1.
13 James A. Piazza, “Rooted in Poverty? Terrorism, Poor Economic Develop
ment, and Social Cleavages,” Terrorism and Political Violence 18:1 (Spring
2006): 170.
14 Daphne Burdman, “Education, Indoctrination, and Incitement: Palestinian
Children on Their Way to Martyrdom,” Terrorism and Political Violence 15:1
(Spring 2003): 97.
15 Valerie Strauss and Emily Wax, “Where Two Worlds Collide: Muslim
Schools Face Tension of Islamic, U.S. Views,” Washington Post, February
25, 2002, A1.
16 Ted Gurr, “Political Protest and Rebellion in the 1960s: The United States
in World Perspectives,” in Hugh Graham and Ted Gurr, eds., Violence in
America (Beverly Hills, CA: SAGE, 1979), 59–73.
17 William Eubank and Leonard Weinberg, “Terrorism and Democracy:
Perpetrators and Victims,” Terrorism and Political Violence 13:1 (Spring
2001): 160, 161.
18 Piazza, 159.
19 Gary G. Sick, “The Political Underpinnings of Terrorism,” in Charles W.
Kegley, Jr., ed., International Terrorism: Characteristics, Causes, Controls
(New York: St. Martin’s, 1990), 51.
20 Richard Shultz, “Conceptualizing Political Terrorism,” in Kegley, 45.
21 Martha Crenshaw, “The Logic of Terrorism,” in Walter Reich, ed., Origins of
Terrorism: Psychologies, Ideologies, States of Minds (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1990), 10, 11.
22 Ehud Sprinzak, “Extreme Left Terrorism in a Democracy,” in Reich, 78.
23 Christopher C. Harmon, Terrorism Today (London: Frank Cass, 2000), 201.
24 Bryan Caplan, “Terrorism: The Relevance of the Rational Choice Model,”
Public Choice 128:1–2 (2006): 93.
25 Ibid.
The Making of Terrorists 153
26 Louise Richardson, What Terrorists Want: Understanding the Enemy,
Containing the Threat (New York: Random House, 2006), ch. 4.
27 For more on the instrumental approach, see Martha Crenshaw, “Theories
of Terrorism: Instrumental and Organizational Approaches,” in David C.
Rapoport, ed., Inside Terrorist Organizations (London: Frank Cass, 2001),
13–31.
28 Jerrold M. Post, “Terrorist Psycho-Logic: Terrorist Behavior as a Product of
Psychological Forces,” in Reich, 23.
29 Ibid., 25.
30 The results of a study of German terrorists are cited and commented on by
Peter H. Merkl, “West German Left-Wing Terrorism,” in Martha Crenshaw,
ed., Terrorism in Context (University Park: Pennsylvania State University
Press, 1995), 203–4.
31 Konrad Kellen, “Ideology and Rebellion: Terrorism in West Germany,” in
Reich, 58.
32 Merkl, 204.
33 Jeffrey Ian Ross, “Beyond the Conceptualization of Terrorism: A
Psychological-Structural Model of the Causes of This Activity,” in Craig
Summers and Eric Markusen, eds., Collective Violence (Lanham, MD:
Rowman & Littlefield, 1999).
34 Randy Borum, Psychology of Terrorism (Tampa: University of South Florida,
2004).
35 Post, 25, 35.
36 Pete Simi et al., “Narratives of Childhood Adversity and Adolescent
Misconduct as Precursors to Violent Extremism: A Life-Course Criminological
Approach,” Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 53:4 (2016):
536–63.
37 Jasper L. De Bie, Christianne J. de Poot, and Joanne P. van der Leun, “Shifting
Modus Operandi of Jihadist Foreign Fighters from the Netherlands between
2000 and 2013: A Crime Script Analysis,” Terrorism and Political Violence
27:3 (2015): 426.
38 Ibid.
39 Donatella della Porta, “Left-Wing Terrorism in Italy,” in Crenshaw, Terrorism
in Context, 140.
40 Schbley, 119.
41 The global Salafi movement aims to restore authentic Islam and to establish
one united Islamist state reaching from Morocco to the Philippines.
42 Marc Sageman, Understanding Terror Networks (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 135.
43 Loretta Napoleoni, Modern Jihad: Tracing the Dollars behind the Terror
Networks (London: Pluto Press, 2003), 132.
44 Pete Simi et al., “Addicted to Hate: Identity Residual among Former White
Supremacists,” American Sociological Review 82:6 (2017): 1167–87.
45 Ibid.
46 Laqueur, 67, 68.
47 Malise Ruthven, “The Rise of the Muslim Terrorists,” New York Review of
Books, May 29, 2008, 33.
48 Margarette Driscoll, “My ISIS Boyfriend: A Reporter’s Undercover Life with
a Terrorist,” New York Post, March 7, 2015.
49 Tim Highfield, Stephen Harrington, and Axel Bruns, “Twitter as a Technology
for Audiencing and Fandom,” Information, Communication & Society 16:3
(2013): 315.
50 Jeffrey D. Simon, Lone Wolf Terrorism: Understanding the Growing Threat
(Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2013), 21.
154 Terrorism
51 Brian M. Jenkins, “Foreword,” in Simon, Lone Wolf Terrorism, 7–11.
52 Michel Wieviorka, The Making of Terrorism (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1993), 10.
53 Jessica Stern, Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill (New
York: HarperCollins, 2003), 142.
54 Wieviorka, ch. 1.
55 Sprinzak, 64–85.
56 Ibid., 82.
57 Merkl, 206.
58 Della Porta, 150.
59 Quoted by Jerrold M. Post, Ehud Sprinzak, and Laurita M. Denny, “The
Terrorists in Their Own Words: Interviews with 35 Incarcerated Middle
Eastern Terrorists,” Terrorism and Political Violence 15:1 (Spring 2003): 178.
60 Ibid., 179.
61 Albert Bandura, “Mechanisms of Moral Disengagement,” in Reich, 163.
62 Martha Crenshaw, “The Causes of Terrorism,” Comparative Politics 13:4
(1981): 379–99.
63 Andrea Elliott, “A Militant’s Path from Pakistan to Times Square,” New
York Times, June 22, 2010, www.nytimes.com/2010/06/23/world/23terror.
html?hp, accessed July 9, 2010.
64 Stern, 283.
7 Women, Children, and Terrorism

After a female Palestinian teenager blew herself up in a supermarket in

Jerusalem killing an Israeli girl in her teens and a security guard in 2002,
President George W. Bush said, “When an 18-year-old Palestinian girl is
induced to blow herself up and in the process kills a 17-year-old Israeli girl,
the future is dying.” The president expressed the shock that many people
around the world felt when they learned of the suicide attack. The young
age of both the attacker and the victim heightened the shock in this case.
Following the terrorist drama in a packed Moscow theater in the fall
of 2002, one commentator asked,

Who did not feel a deep unease at the sight of the female Chechen
terrorists in the Moscow theater before it was stormed, with their
eyes peering through the masks of their black burqas, with their
Kalashnikovs, and their explosives strapped to their bodies?

Probably expressing the sentiments of many observers, the writer pointed

out that terrorism is always disturbing, but that “there’s an extra level of
disquiet when the terrorists are female.”1 The shock value of terrorism is
far greater when perpetrated by women because in such cases a common
assumption is that if “women decide to violate all established norms about
the sanctity of life, they do so only as a last resort.”2 As a result, when
female terrorists, especially suicide terrorists, strike, they get far more media
attention than their male counterparts. Moreover, media professionals are
far more inclined to explore the motives and the causes of female terrorists
than of their male counterparts.3 This is, of course, precisely what terrorist
groups want: mass-mediated debates about their causes and grievances.
So, whenever female terrorists strike, they receive far greater atten-
tion in their target societies and beyond than male terrorists for the same
type of actions. The reason is clear: In most, if not all, societies vio-
lence is associated with men—not women. That’s even true for fictitious
depictions of crime and terrorism. In October 2012, for example, NBC
aired an episode of its long-running series Law and Order: SVU titled
“Acceptable Loss.” What starts out as an investigation of a brutal prosti-
tution ring, turns into the discovery of a terrorism plot and into the hunt
156 Terrorism
for a terrorist believed to be ready to strike. Experienced police officers
and a seasoned Homeland Security agent assume that the unknown ter-
rorist is a male. In a shocking turn of events, they find that the terrorist
is a beautiful young woman from South Asia. Once caught, Sophia gets
the opportunity to tell her story and motive for turning to terrorism: An
American drone strike in her village killed her father and set her onto the
path to take revenge in the United States. “Every terrorist has to tell a
story,” one of the agents says.
Well, yes, but it takes a female terrorist to tell a story that makes her
a somewhat sympathetic figure.
When female terrorists plot or carry out attacks, popular culture con-
siders them outliers, exceptions. But this is not the reality as reflected
in the FBI’s Domestic Terrorism Most Wanted List that in the summer
of 2015 comprised eight persons—five of them women. Two of these
women belonged to revolutionary groups (the Black Liberation Army
and the Black Panther Party) most active during the 1970s and 1980s;
two were members of the May 19th Communist Organization; one was
a member of the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) and/or Animal Liberation
Front (ALF).4 For many years the most notorious among female terrorists
wanted by the FBI was Joann Deborah Chesimard, for whose apprehen-
sion the FBI offered a reward of up to $1 million. By 2015 she was no
longer on the Most Wanted Domestic Terrorism List but on the FBI’s
global list of the Ten Most Wanted Terrorists that included at the time
Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden’s successor.5
In 1973, Chesimard, a member of the Black Liberation Army, and two
accomplices shot and killed one New Jersey state trooper and injured
another when stopped on the New Jersey Turnpike. The trio were wanted
for bank robberies and other crimes. She was sentenced to life, escaped
prison in 1979, and fled to Cuba. With the exception of the ELF/ALF
activist who committed arson and other violent acts in the late twentieth
and early twenty-first centuries, the other women were members of leftist
groups that were part of a multi-continent movement most active in the
1970s and 1980s. By mid-2018, five of fifteen persons on the FBI’s list
of Most Wanted Domestic Terrorists were females. Chesimard remained
on the FBI’s international list of Most Wanted Terrorists along with the
Jordanian woman Ahlam Ahmad Ai-Tamini and twenty-six males con-
victed or accused of terrorism.
Female terrorists are not a recent phenomenon. Although there were in
the past and are today more male than female terrorists, both as leaders
and as followers, taken together the number of women in these organiza-
tions was and is substantial. According to Christopher Harmon, “More
than 30% of international terrorists are women, and females are central
to membership rosters and operational roles in nearly all insurgencies.”6
Other estimates range from 20 to 30 percent for many domestic and inter-
national terrorist groups. The membership of some terrorist organizations
Women, Children, and Terrorism 157
was and is all male, and a few have been known to have only female
members, but most of the groups are composed of both men and women.
Typically, far-left terrorist groups have emphasized the recruitment of
women, and far-right groups have been much less interested in recruiting
women willing to commit violence. As Harmon observed,

If the presence of women helps to illuminate the recruitment patterns

of successful leftist groups, a relative absence of women in the active
hard core is a revealing indicator of different recruitment patterns
among neo-Nazis and similar rightist militant groups. The latter gen-
erally do not seek out and promote women members. That approach,
the product of culture and ideology, may be one of the more decisive
weaknesses of these groups, which remain stuck on the political mar-
gins and are also overwhelmingly male.7

Regardless of the far-left/far-right divide in this respect, terrorists in all

kinds of countries, regions, and continents and with all kinds of causes
have for a long time recognized the advantage of incorporating women
into their operations. Karla J. Cunningham has noted,

Not only have women historically been active in politically violent

organizations, the regional and ideological scope of this activity has
been equally broad. Women have been operational (e.g., regular)
in virtually every region and there are clear trends toward women
becoming more fully incorporated into numerous terrorist organiza-
tions. Cases from Colombia, Italy, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Turkey, Iran,
Norway, and the United States suggest that women have not only
functioned in support capacities, but have also been leaders in organi-
zations, recruitment, and fund-raising, as well as tasked with carrying
out the most deadly missions undertaken by terrorist organizations.8

Indeed, since the beginning of modern-day terrorism, women were

actively involved in political violence—beginning with their roles in the
anarchist bombings of nineteenth-century Europe. Women played par-
ticularly prominent roles in the post-World War II era—especially among
far-left terrorist groups in the United States, Western Europe, Japan, and
Latin and Central America. During the 1970s and 1980s, the names of
many of these female terrorists became well known along with those of
their male comrades. Women strove in other types of groups and in other
parts of the world as well. To mention just a few examples of high-profile
female terrorists, apart from those in the well-known Baader-Meinhof or
Weather Underground types of organizations: Lolita Lebron was a par-
ticipant in the 1950 terrorist attack in the U.S. House of Representatives
by the Puerto Rican separatist group FALN (see Chapter 4); as a member
of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Leila Khaled
158 Terrorism
participated in hijackings in 1969 and 1970; Kim Hyon Hui was one of
the North Korean terrorists responsible for the 1987 bombing of a South
Korean airliner that killed all 115 persons on board; and in 1991, a female
member of the Tamil Tigers organization in Sri Lanka, known only by
the name “Dhanu,” assassinated Indian party leader Rajiv Gandhi dur-
ing one of his election campaign appearances.
In a number of prominent terrorist organizations, women were repre-
sented in large numbers as rank-and-file members and also held leadership
positions. Thus, the original RAF in Germany had fifty-one male and
thirty-nine female members. Ulrike Meinhof and Horst Mahler formu-
lated the group’s ideological program. The successors of the original
Baader-Meinhof group had more female than male leaders—ten women
and six men. During the life span of the original Red Brigades in Italy, the
organization’s leadership included twelve men and seven women.9 When
arrested and imprisoned, female terrorists have proven more committed
to the terrorist cause and their comrades than their male counterparts.
However, while women were very much involved in the violent activi-
ties of such groups, it is also true that these organizations did not have a
large number of members so that the actual number of women was quite
small. According to Cindy Ness, there is no reason “to believe that these
groups could have recruited females in substantial numbers given that
they lacked broad-based support or the extensive infrastructure neces-
sary to enlarge their operations.”10
The Revolutionary Forces of Colombia (FARC) were among the larg-
est revolutionary, left-extremist groups with an official policy of gender
equality. To a certain extent this policy was implemented. Typically
women comprised between 20 and 40 percent of the total FARC force.
Girls and women went through the same basic military training as boys
and men did; they had to adhere to the same disciplinary rules; they had
to accept the same hardships associated with life in an insurgent group
that challenged the state’s military forces. But that did not mean that
with respect to gender the FARC was an equal opportunity organization.
Indeed, some of the same gender problems that plagued women in civil-
ian society were also prevalent in the insurgent army.11
Researchers who interviewed women and men who had left the FARC
saw five reasons for the group’s long practice of recruiting women:

1 The revolutionary ideology of the FARC insisted on gender equality

and according to the organization that is precisely what is practiced
within its ranks.
2 The inclusion of women increased the number and quality of the
pool of potential recruits.
3 Female fighters had proven as tough as and even more goal oriented
and brutal than their male counterparts—even if only because they
had to prove their qualifications.
Women, Children, and Terrorism 159
4 Women were exploited for FARC propaganda intended to soften the
image of its fighters.
5 Women became sexual partners of males in the FARC and thereby
were “essential for the morale and stability of the organization.”12

While the FARC claimed that women joined because of their inequality
and hardship in Colombia’s civilian society, women who were formerly
in the organization reported that there was no gender equality in the
organization either.
Most right-wing, traditional, reactionary groups do not even pretend
that there are equal rights for females within their ranks. Yet, in some
instances, women are enlisted for supporting roles in violent plots. Here
are two examples:

•• In 2002, Erica Chase (age twenty-one) of Boston and her boyfriend

Leo Felton planned to blow up Holocaust museums and targeted
persons for violent attacks for their cause: Ridding the country of
minorities—blacks, Latinos, Asians, and, most of all, Jews. Both
were members of Neo-Nazi hate groups. Targets included the
New England Holocaust Memorial, the U.S. Holocaust Museum
in Washington, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, and other African
American leaders.
•• In 2003, Holly Dartez (age twenty-eight) was found guilty and sen-
tenced to a year in prison for her participation in a Ku Klux Klan
(KKK) cross-burning in Longville, Louisiana. She was the secretary
of the local KKK chapter and drove four male Klansmen to the
house of three African American men who had moved to Louisiana
from Mississippi. All participants received prison sentences, but they
achieved their goal in frightening their African American targets
sufficiently that they did not move their families to Louisiana but
instead returned to Mississippi.

In the Boston case, it seems that Erica Chase came under the spell of
thirty-year-old Felton who had served eleven years in prison for attempt-
ing to kill a black taxi driver in New York City. In the Louisiana case,
Holly Dartez drove the male Klansmen to the site of the cross-burning.
In both cases, the males were the leaders, whereas the women had merely
supporting roles—which, again, is typical for these sorts of organizations.
Women have more prominent positions among extreme antiabortion
groups, such as the Army of God, that encourages and glorifies terror-
ism: violence against abortion providers whether carried out by males
or females. The website displays a list of “Anti-Abortion Heroes of the
Faith,” among them women. The most prominent female “anti-abortion
hero” is Shelley Shannon serving a thirty-year prison sentence for the
attempted murder of an abortion provider in Wichita, Kansas, and for
160 Terrorism
carrying out two acid attacks against women’s health centers as well as
several arson and bombing attacks against Planned Parenthood types of
facilities. In one of her posts Shannon writes:

The accusation is made that it is not pro-life to close an abortion facil-

ity by destroying the building, and not pro-life to shoot an abortion-
ist. I did a lot of blockades with Advocates For Life, Lambs of Christ,
Operation Rescue, and other groups. I also did a lot of picketing and
other pro-life activities. Sometimes I felt like a failure when I stood
with a sign and didn’t do everything I could to try to save babies
lives. I let them kill the babies! I allowed it. When you stand and
watch 20 or more babies being taken to their death, how is that more
pro-life than making it so those babies cannot be killed? . . . Those
who killed abortionists chose life for all the innocent babies he would
have killed, and did our country a great service.13

Case Study: Women of the Islamic State

At the height of ISIS’s territorial gains there were two all-women ISIS
brigades, al-Khansaa and Umnn al-Rayan, but they were not fight-
ing on the frontlines. These armed brigades were functioning as a
religious police that enforced morality according to the Islamic State’s
interpretation of Sharia law. It seems though that Muslimas in these
brigades, especially in al-Khansaa, were as brutal as the Islamic
State’s male fighters when they found women in the Caliphate who
violated Sharia as dictated by ISIS. Thus, al-Khansaa policewomen
allegedly disfigured the faces of women with acid for not wearing a
niqab and tortured a mother for breastfeeding in public.14
In early 2015, the media wing of al-Khansaa published on vari-
ous social media sites “Women of the Islamic State: A manifesto on
women by the Al-Khansaa Brigade.”15 According to the manifesto,
“the fundamental function for women is in the house with her husband
and children.” As for the “ideal” education, women are only supposed
to learn the most rudimentary things, as the manifesto suggests:

From age seven to nine, there will be three lessons: fiqh [mean-
ing Islamic jurisprudence and the understanding of the Sharia]
and religion, Quranic Arabic (written and read) and science
(accounting and natural sciences).
From ten to twelve, there will be more religious studies,
especially fiqh, focusing more on fiqh related to women and the
Women, Children, and Terrorism 161

rulings on marriage and divorce. This is in addition to the other

two subjects. Skills like textiles and knitting, basic cooking will
also be taught.
From thirteen to fifteen, there will be more of a focus on
Shariah, as well as more manual skills (especially those related
to raising children) and less of the science, the basics of which
will already have been taught. In addition, they will be taught
about Islamic history, the life of the Prophet and his followers.16

The most shocking part of the manifesto states that “it is considered
legitimate for a girl to be married at the age of nine. Most pure girls
will be married by sixteen or seventeen, while they are still young and
active” (emphasis added).
There are a few exceptions spelled out, namely, that women may
be outside their home for:

•• studying the science of religion;

•• working as doctors or teachers according to Sharia law;
•• participating in the jihad in extraordinary emergencies, if the
enemy is attacking her country and the men are not enough [sic]
to protect it.

The last exception is of particular interest because by late 2017 an

existential emergency existed when ISIS had lost most of its previ-
ously conquered territory and many jihadis had been killed or forced
to flee. In multiple appeals published in the organization’s online
magazine Rumiyah, its weekly newsletter Naba, and in social media,
ISIS now called on its females to join the battle. According to one
declaration in Naba,

Today, in the context of this war against the Islamic state, and
with all that is experienced of hardship and pain, it is manda-
tory for the Muslim women to fulfill their duty from all aspects
in supporting the mujahideen in this battle, by preparing them-
selves as mujahidat in the cause of Allah, and readying to sac-
rifice themselves to defend the religion of Allah the Most High
and Mighty.17

Indeed, soon thereafter ISIS released several videos of female jihadis

in action.
162 Terrorism
In the early 1980s, Martha Crenshaw noted,

There has been considerable speculation about the prominent posi-

tion of women in terrorist groups (not prominent in comparison to
the number of women in the population at large but in proportion to
the number of women active in politics or in leadership roles). It will
be interesting to find out if female participation in violence will have
an effect on general social roles or on the stereotyping of women.18

To what extent the role of women in social, political, and professional

settings is affected by female roles in terrorist groups, if at all, is diffi-
cult to assess. But stereotypical images and prejudices do enter into some
of the arguments put forth in the discussion of the perennial question:
Why do women become terrorists? A number of explanations have been
advanced—all of them guided by deep-seated cultural gender stereotypes.

For the Sake of Love

Probably the most common view is that women become terrorists to fol-
low their lovers, husbands, or perhaps brothers or male friends into the
organization. Others believe that personal tragedies or disappointments
drive women into close-knit terrorist groups that give them the sense
of belonging and help them forget their troubles. This view “diminishes
women’s credibility and influence both within and outside organiza-
tions,” as Karla Cunningham has suggested, and it is widely held by
experts and the public.19 Robin Morgan has argued that women would
have rather died than admit the fact that love motivated them to join ter-
rorist groups.20 In Morgan’s view, Ulrike Meinhof, one of the founders
and leaders of the RAF, Leila Khaled, the PFLP hijacker, or Shigenobu
Fusako, the founder and leader of the Japanese Red Army—all females in
terrorist organizations—were and are merely token terrorists and victims
of male dominance, power, and coercion. Looking upon terrorism as
inherently male, Morgan has described it as “the intersection of violence,
eroticism, and what is considered ‘masculinity.’”21

Demonstration of Gender Equality

In the 1970s, sociologists, psychologists, and political observers pointed
to the feminist movement as the most likely explanation for the large
number of women in left-wing terrorist groups.22 Criminologist Freda
Adler explained female terrorist activity in an interview with the New
York Times as a “deviant expression of feminism.”23 According to the
Times, Adler said that the publicity surrounding terrorism gives female
terrorists “a platform to say, ‘I am liberated from past stereotypes,
I am accepted in the ultimate masculine roles.’”24 Earlier, in her book
Women, Children, and Terrorism 163
Sisters in Crime, Adler wrote, “Despite their broad political pronounce-
ments, what the new revolutionaries [such as female members of the
Weather Underground] wanted was not simply urban social gains, but
sexual equality.”25 Pointing in particular to the female terrorists of the
Symbionese Liberation Army, she added,

That such women turned so drastically toward a new and highly

volatile identity caused a good portion of the nation to ask incred-
ulously, “How could women do this sort of thing?” Perhaps the
question itself was the very point of the episode. The fires which
consumed the ramshackle Los Angeles house where the small band
staged its last shoot-out also burned away a large part of the prevail-
ing American illusion about women.26

In Europe, experts provided similar explanations for the large number

of female members in terrorist organizations, such as the Red Brigades
in Italy and the RAF in West Germany. According to one news account
in 1977, “Italian and German sociologists and news commentators, all
of them men, have suggested over the last few weeks that the significant
female membership in radical and terrorist groups was an unwelcome
consequence of the women’s liberation movement.”27 Male sociologists
and commentators in Europe were not the only ones to blame women’s
lib. A female German politician stated, “These women demonstratively
negate everything that is part of the established feminine character.”28
A male professor in Munich wondered whether these female terrorists “see
violence in society as [the] prerogative of males and ask, ‘Why shouldn’t
we participate?’”29 The former neighbor of the notorious female terrorist
Susanne Albrecht complained, “She sang Communist songs all night and
never cleaned the stairs.”30
Female terrorists in traditionally male-dominated societies have also
been hailed for furthering gender equality. Yassir Arafat, at the height
of the second intifada, told thousands of women during a speech in
Ramallah, “Women and men are equal. You are my army of roses that
will crush Israeli tanks.”31 Soon thereafter, in early 2002 and following
the first female suicide bombing in Israel proper, Abdel Hamuda, the edi-
tor of an Egyptian weekly, declared that this was a monumental event in
that it “shattered a glass ceiling” and “elevated the value of Arab women
and, in one moment, and with enviable courage, put an end to the unend-
ing debate about equality between men and women.”32 But it is far from
clear that a larger segment of these women became terrorists in a quest
for gender equality.
Take the example of female Palestinian suicide terrorists. Living in a
milieu in which gender inequality is deeply rooted in religious and cultural
traditions, young women with personal disappointments and emotional
problems are particularly vulnerable to being recruited and trained as
164 Terrorism
“martyrs.” Indeed, after talking to the families and friends of four female
suicide bombers and interviewing several women who had been recruited
but did not finish their mission, Barbara Victor wrote,

I discovered the hard reality that it was never another woman who
recruited the suicide bombers. Without exception, these women
had been trained by a trusted member of the family—a brother, an
uncle—or an esteemed religious leader, teacher, or family friend, all
of whom were men. What I also discovered was that all four who
died, plus the others who had tried and failed to die a martyr’s death,
had personal problems that made their lives untenable within their
own culture and society.33

These women’s social environment made them vulnerable to male manipu-

lation and exploitation. In Victor’s judgment, “there were, in fact, very dif-
ferent motives and rewards for the men who died a martyr’s death than for
the women.”34 It seems that whereas men justified the rationale for “mar-
tyrdom” in political terms, women were told by their male handlers that
their own or a male family member’s transgressions could only be redeemed
by killing themselves to kill Israelis and enjoy happiness in paradise.

Can Real Women Become Terrorists?

This question points to the image of the female terrorist as that of the
deviant woman—as masculine, not feminine. This view was widely held
in the past, but it is still alive and well in the twenty-first century. In early
2002, an article in a leading U.S. news magazine linked terrorism to male
hormones. The authors wrote, “Testosterone has always had a lot to do
with terrorism, even among secular bombers and kidnappers like Italy’s
Red Brigade and Germany’s Baader-Meinhof gang. As Andreas Baader
himself once declared, ‘F—cking and shooting are the same thing.’”35 In
this case, the reader was explicitly told that terrorism is a male domain.
At the same time, the implicit message was that female terrorists are aber-
rations, the exceptions to the rule, not real women.
Given such stereotypes, Cindy Ness concluded that

The secular terrorist group and the religious terrorist group alike
must historicize itself in such a way that its actions are not viewed as
a rupture from ‘decent’ behavior but, rather, a transition whereby an
old gender value is seen as being given new expression.36

Thus, the Tamil Tigers, for example, did not retreat from their culture’s
esteem for chastity and motherhood and rejection of female warriors,
but drew also from Hindu mythology to justify women freedom fighters
in extraordinary circumstances. According to Ness, “on all occasions
other than when their military projects are coordinated, the sexes remain
Women, Children, and Terrorism 165
segregated within the LTTE. Females live in separate camps, run their
own military organization, and plan their own projects.”37 Similarly,
religious groups like Hamas characterize female terrorists “as defend-
ers of Islam, not by their stepping out of accepted social norms.”38 To
put it differently, terrorist organizations find explanations to counter
the idea that female members are not really women. As a sociologist
with knowledge of the Tamil Tigers put it, “behind the appearance of
every uniformed female fighter, is a tender, gentle and passionate young
woman with all the qualities attributed to femininity.”39

Tactical Advantages of Female Terrorists

Although, as noted earlier, female terrorists are not rare, the conventional
wisdom is that females are far less likely than males to commit political
violence. As a result, women have far better chances of carrying out ter-
rorist attacks without being intercepted than their male comrades. This
has been long recognized by terrorists who oversee their groups’ opera-
tions and are responsible for the success of attacks. Women are simply
less likely to be suspects and therefore less likely to be denied access to
potential targets and areas for attacks; they are less frequently selected
for thorough security checks than males; and they can fake pregnancies
for the sake of hiding weapons and explosives. As former German terror-
ist Bommi Bauman, member of a successor cell of the Baader-Meinhof
group, observed,

If a man in a high position, perhaps knowing that he may be a tar-

get for terrorists, is approached by a woman, he may think, she is
a prostitute. Women can go straight to the target’s doorstep; some-
times they do it in pairs, two women, saying they are lost. If two men
approached him, he would be suspicious.40

What Bauman described was precisely the script for several of the kid-
nappings and assassinations conducted by West German terrorists
in which women exploited the fact that they were not as alarming as
men—although it was well known that females were well represented in
these groups. Terrorists elsewhere followed this blueprint as well. Before
Dhanu, a female member of the Tamil Tigers, assassinated Rajiv Gandhi,
she had “garlanded him, bowed at his feet, and then detonated a bomb
that killed them both.”41 Playing the role of a female admirer of Gandhi,
she did not have any problem with getting close to him. It is telling that
one of the members of a two-person backup team was a young woman
as well. The Kurdistan Workers Party, too, decided to use female mem-
bers for suicide attacks because of their tactical advantages. But women
were also more inclined to become human bombs because they wanted
to prove themselves useful in a struggle in which they often could not
match the physical strength of their male comrades. The wave of terrorist
166 Terrorism
attacks against Russian targets by female suicide bombers was partially
explained as Chechen groups taking advantage of the fact that Chechen
females were able “to move more freely than Chechen men, who are rou-
tinely harassed by Russia’s police and security services.”42 In early 2004,
after Hamas claimed responsibility for dispatching the first female suicide
bomber to kill Israelis, the group’s spiritual leader, Sheik Ahmed Yassin,
cited “purely tactical reasons” when asked why his organization had
decided on selecting a woman, saying, “It could be that a man would not
be able to reach the target, and that’s why they had to use a woman.”43
The authorities in some societies came to understand over time that
female terrorists were just as likely as their male comrades to commit
deadly acts of terrorism. When West Germany was faced with a wave
of terror by the RAF and its successor groups, the country’s counter-
terrorism units were allegedly ordered by their superiors to “shoot
the women first.”44 In responding to the increased attacks by Chechen
women, Russian authorities expanded their security checks to women
with scarves and other clothing typical of Muslim women. In the long
run, therefore, it is possible, if not likely, that the gender advantage will
fade once it is clear that attacks by female terrorists are not exceptions,
but common occurrences. For this to happen, however, it is not enough
for top officials to understand that the female paradox is a myth in the
realm of terrorism; rather, the men and women who implement anti- and
counterterrorist policies day in and day out must have this understand-
ing as well—and act accordingly. But this seems easier said than done.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, for example, developed an
official profile of a typical terrorist that focused on males only. Jessica
Stern criticized this as “an important weakness in our counterterrorism
strategy” and warned,

Profiling men exclusively, and also focusing so tightly on countries

known to harbor terrorists, are significant loopholes that have not
been closed despite the FBI’s recognition that al Qaeda has begun
recruiting women, and despite the discovery last spring that an MIT-
trained female scientist may have been providing logistical support
to al Qaeda.45

Even in societies that have experienced repeated attacks by female terror-

ists, there is still a tendency to view and treat women differently. Israel
is a perfect example here. In January 2004, when a twenty-two-year-
old Palestinian woman, pretending to be crippled, told Israelis at a Gaza
checkpoint that she had metal plates in her leg that would sound the
alarm, they allowed her to wait for a woman to search her in a special
area. Moments later, the woman blew herself up and killed four Israelis.
Lamenting the cynical exploitation of his soldiers’ consideration for the
dignity of women, the officer in charge said,
Women, Children, and Terrorism 167
We’re doing our best to be humanitarian, to consider the problems
associated with searching women. She said she had a medical prob-
lem, that’s why the soldiers let her in, to check her in private because
she is a woman. That’s a very cruel, cynical use of the humanitarian
considerations of our soldiers.46

The lesson here is this: While there are no profound gender differences
with respect to terrorists’ motives and actions, most societies continue
to deem females less suspect and less dangerous than males. Indeed,
indications are that more women will be recruited by terrorist groups
in the future. After analyzing cross-national opinion surveys in fourteen
Muslim countries, two scholars concluded that female respondents were
more likely to support terrorism in defense of Islam.47
There is also evidence that female terrorists can be more committed
to the terrorist cause and their comrades than their male counterparts.
With respect to the Italian Red Brigades and similar groups, Luisella de
Cataldo Neuberger and Tiziana Valentini found that a larger proportion
of male members collaborated with law enforcement and distanced them-
selves from the activities and goals of their terrorist organizations, when
imprisoned, than their female counterparts. Although not enough data
are available for the first generation of RAF, women seemed less inclined
than men to cooperate with the authorities once they were behind bars.48

Suicide Terrorism as Family Project

Yusef (seventeen) was a loving big brother who was happy when
videotaping his younger brother Firman (fifteen) and his sisters
Fadhila (twelve) and Famela (eight). Their dad, Dita Oepriarto,
and mom, Puji Kuswati, were doting parents. The family lived
in a multi-ethnic neighborhood of Indonesia’s second largest city
Surabaya and the children attended a private Muslim school that
emphasized racial and religious harmony. The family had contact
with Christian neighbors.
On May 13, 2018, the whole family carried out simultane-
ous suicide attacks against Christian churches. The father drove
his explosive-laden truck into a church during Sunday service; his
two sons blew themselves up on a motorcycle that they had driven
to a second church; mother and daughters detonated their bombs
near a third church. Twelve persons were killed and several dozens
injured. It was one of Indonesia’s most lethal terrorist attacks. Just
as the close-knit family had lived, all its members died in a well-
planned, three-pronged, suicide-homicide mission.

(continued)
168 Terrorism
(continued)
Hours later, a father of four accidentally detonated a bomb
that he and his family planned to explode jointly near a Christian
church. Instead, the bomb killed his wife and one of his daughters,
landing him in prison.
The following day, five members of yet another family blew
themselves up at a church, injuring ten bystanders and killing them-
selves, except for an eight-year-old girl that survived.
Even in the deadly annals of catastrophic terrorism the joint sui-
cide attacks of whole families opened a new, shocking, frightening
chapter.
The three fathers met at a local Quranic studying group where
their wives and children, too, were introduced to extremist propa-
ganda. Dita Oepriarto, the mastermind of the attacks, turned out to
be the leader of Jamaah Ansharut Daulah, an extremist Indonesian
Muslim group affiliated with ISIS. Indeed, shortly after the attacks
ISIS claimed responsibility.
Outwardly, the suicide families were comfortable in their multi-
ethnic, multi-religious settings. Neither the parents nor their chil-
dren seemed particularly religious, the women and girls did not
wear headscarfs. It seems that precisely their apparent modern life
style was a clever camouflage of their extremist feelings, covert
actions, and sinister plans.
They all seemed to have voluntarily embraced the plan to die
themselves in order to kill others—Christians, infidels—and in the
process go together to heaven.

The Making of Child Terrorists

“That’s my boy,” Khaled Sharrouf wrote on Twitter alongside a photo
of his seven-year-old son using both hands to hold up a man’s sev-
ered head. The photo, since removed from Twitter, was reportedly
taken in Raqqa, a Syrian city in the stranglehold of Islamic State mili-
tants, where the Australian father had taken his young family to join
the fight.
The Islamic State is not the first terrorist organization to recruit and
train young boys to commit unspeakable violence, but it is the first ter-
rorist enterprise that documents and publicizes how it runs its training
camps for young boys, many not older than nine or ten years and some
significantly younger. Nor does ISIS make a secret of its objective to
use its “Sharia camps” to produce a whole new generation of jihadists.
Indeed, in one of these readily available online propaganda videos, one
Women, Children, and Terrorism 169
jihadist in an ISIS training camp for young boys declares proudly, “This
generation of children is the generation of the Caliphate.” Some fathers
are complicit in transforming young children into eager killers. In one
video, a man called Abdullah, the Belgian, is shown with his little son,
perhaps five or six years old. The father prods the little boy again and
again to say “The Islamic State.” He asks questions like, “What have the
infidels done?” The son finally answers, “They kill Muslims.”49
One result of these indoctrination methods was shown in the most
shocking online video in ISIS’s long list of horror shows that depicted a
young boy as executioner of two men who were allegedly Russian spies.
In the video, the boy, holding a pistol, stands next to a grown-up jihad-
ist who recites religious verses. The two condemned men are kneeling
when the boy steps toward them firing several shots before and after the
men collapse. The video ends with footage from an earlier production
in which the same boy identified himself as Abdallah and said that he
wanted to grow up to kill infidels.50 There could not be a more troubling
case of ruthless indoctrination, recruitment, and training with the sole
purpose of producing killers and publicizing it all online.
When it comes to the indoctrination of children, both boys and girls,
they tend to embrace whatever they are told by people closest to them,
parents, siblings, teachers, group leaders, and so on. In Nazi Germany,
boys and girls became members of the “Hitler Youth,” where they
wore uniforms and were socialized into the totalitarian regime’s hateful
propaganda.
Noting that of the many parties that recruit and use children, “the
vast majority are non-state actors,” the UN Special Representative
of the Secretary General for Children and Armed Conflict, Radhika
Coomaraswamy, told the General Assembly of several new developments:

We are also discovering that more and more children are being used
for military intelligence by different armed forces and groups around
the world . . . We are increasingly concerned with the changing
nature of warfare in different parts of the world and the difficult
challenges it poses for child protection partners. In some wars we
find children being used as suicide bombers—there were seven such
cases in Afghanistan and several in Iraq in 2009.51

If anything, the misuse of children by terrorists, especially guerrilla-type

organizations, has increased in the second decade of the twenty-first cen-
tury. Earlier, the Afghan Taliban and Lashkar-e-Tayyiba and the Taliban
in Pakistan began the practice of recruiting young boys from religious
schools or madrassas as suicide bombers; Al Qaeda in Iraq, too, enlisted
boys to attack U.S. troops and their allies. More recently, ISIS and its
associate in Nigeria, Boko Haram, are the main offenders. ISIS’s indoc-
trination and training camps are for boys only, whereas Boko Haram
170 Terrorism
targets girls as well and kidnaps them typically from schools to drive
home the point that females ought not to be educated. While some of
the young girls are forced into marrying jihadists, others are forced or
convinced to become suicide bombers.

What Happened to Our Children?

Beginning in 2016 ISIS tried to convince and prepare children in
the West for attacks in their own neighborhoods—with stunning
success in Germany, France, and elsewhere in Europe. In Germany
alone, there were five ISIS-related attacks or foiled attacks involv-
ing teenagers:

•• A fifteen-year-old girl of German-Moroccan origin who was

in direct contact with an ISIS agent stabbed a German police
officer in the neck with a kitchen knife in Hanover. He survived
the attack after undergoing surgery.
•• Three boys, all aged sixteen, built a home-made bomb and threw
it at a Sikh temple, wounding three—one severely—and causing
extensive damage. The leader of the group, who went by the
name of The Emir, is a German-born son of ethnic Turks. After a
court hearing, his distressed mother wondered, “What happened
to our children?”
•• A seventeen-year-old Afghan asylum seeker attacked passen-
gers on a train traveling through southern Germany with a
knife and ax, injuring four people, two seriously. He admitted
later that he was “a soldier of ISIS.”
•• A sixteen-year-old Syrian asylum seeker was arrested in
Cologne because he was in contact with an ISIS “official” who
instructed him on how to build a bomb.
•• A twelve-year-old Iraqi-German boy, after contact with ISIS
via the messenger service Telegram, left a home-made bomb
near a shopping mall in Ludwigshafen. The bomb failed to
explode. The boy and his seventeen-year-old accomplice in
Austria were arrested.

Intelligence services in France, too, foiled several plots by teenag-

ers, among them one involving two girls and another planned by
three boys.
All of these children and juveniles were radicalized and recruited
by increasingly aggressive ISIS messaging, specifically tailored to
boys and girls. As the so-called Islamic State lost ground on the
Iraqi and Syrian battleground, its propaganda machine produced
Women, Children, and Terrorism 171
videos and computer games designed to hook children and teen-
agers. Once young targets of these propaganda tactics were
captivated, personal contacts were sought and often established by
actual ISIS operatives.

Commenting on the increased number of child terrorists in 2012 and

thus before the establishment of ISIS, Mia Bloom warned that “the next
generation of terrorists will not grow up to take up arms but will do so
while still children.”52 Indeed, even groups that originally target boys
only as cannon fodder enlist girls as less suspicious attackers. In early
2014, there was a most shocking news report from Afghanistan that
an eight-year-old girl was prevented from carrying out a suicide attack
against a police station in Khanshin. According to one dispatch, while
Taliban commandos deployed female fighters before, this was the first
known incident when a very young girl was sent on a suicide mission.
It was reported furthermore that the child was the sister of a prominent
Taliban commander. According to a spokesman for the Interior Ministry,
“one of the Afghan soldiers spotted the girl wearing a suicide jacket.
But she could not operate the button to detonate the suicide vest or she
was arrested before she could carry out the attack.”53 As one would not
expect otherwise, after the incident the little girl was reportedly “in a
state of shock and confusion.”54
In reality, the practice of deploying the very young, especially girls,
was quite normal for a number of terrorist and insurgent groups. Thus,
in December 2016, two seven-year-old girls blew themselves up and
killed themselves in a market in Nigeria, killing another person and
injuring eighteen others. The authorities assumed that Boko Haram
had kidnapped the girls and fitted them with suicide belts. One shocked
eyewitness revealed later,

They got out of a rickshaw and walked right in front of me without

showing the slightest sign of emotion. I tried to speak with one of
them, in Hausa and in English, but she didn’t answer. I thought they
were looking for their mother. She headed toward the poultry sellers,
and then detonated her explosives belt.55

Notes
1 Kevin Meyers, “The Terrible Sight of a Female Terrorist,” www.telegraph.
co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2002/10/27/do2707.xml, accessed
July 20, 2003.
2 Alexis B. Delaney and Peter R. Neumann, “Another Failure of Imagination?
The Spectacular Rise of the Female Terrorist,” International Herald Tribune,
September 6, 2004.
172 Terrorism
3 Ibid.
4 www.fbi.gov/wanted/dt, accessed July 10, 2015.
5 www.fbi.gov/wanted/wanted_terrorists, accessed July 10, 2015.
6 Christopher C. Harmon, Terrorism Today (London: Frank Cass, 2000), 212.
7 Ibid., 220.
8 Karla J. Cunningham, “Cross-Regional Trends in Female Terrorism,” Studies
in Conflict and Terrorism 26:3 (May–June 2003): 175.
9 These numbers are mentioned in Luisella de Cataldo Neuberger and Tiziana
Valentini, Women and Terrorism (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), 8, 9.
10 Cindy D. Ness, “In the Name of the Cause: Women’s Work in Secular and
Religious Terrorism,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 28:5 (September–
October 2005): 356.
11 Keith Stanski, “Terrorism, Gender, and Ideology: A Case Study of Women
who Join the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC),” in James
J. F. Forest, ed., The Making of Terrorists, Volume I: Recruitment (Westport,
CT: Praeger Security International), 2006.
12 Natalia Herrera and Douglas Porch, “‘Like Going to a Fiesta’: The Role of
Women in Columbia’s FARC-EP,” Small Wars and Insurgencies 19:4 (2008):
613–14.
13 wwww.armyofgod.com/ShelleyResponse.html, accessed September 30, 2014.
14 Anita Peresin, “Fatal Attraction: Western Muslimas and ISIS,” Perspectives
on Terrorism 9:3 (2015): 22, www.terrorismanalysts.com/pt/index.php/pot/
article/view/427/0, accessed July 2, 2015.
15 The English version of the manifesto is available at www.quilliamfoundation.
org/wp/wp-content/uploads/publications/free/women-of-the-islamic-state3.
pdf, accessed July 14, 2015.
16 Ibid., 24.
17 Rita Katz, “How Do We Know ISIS Is Losing? Now It’s Asking Women to
Fight,” Washington Post, November 2, 2017, www.washingtonpost.com/news/
posteverything/wp/2017/11/02/how-do-we-know-isis-is-losing-now-its-ask-
ing-women-to-fight-for-it/?utm_term=.9ae775dc8247, accessed May 21, 2018.
18 Martha Crenshaw, “Introduction: Reflection on the Effects of Terrorism,” in
Martha Crenshaw, ed., Terrorism, Legitimacy and Power: The Consequences
of Political Violence (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1983), 24.
19 Cunningham, 171.
20 Robin Morgan, The Demon Lover: The Roots of Terrorism (New York:
Washington Square Press, 2001), 204.
21 Ibid., xvi.
22 Cataldo Neuberger and Valentini.
23 Judy Klemesrud, “A Criminologist’s View of Women Terrorists,” New York
Times, January 9, 1979, A24.
24 Ibid.
25 Freda Adler, Sisters in Crime (New York: Waveland Press, 1975), 20.
26 Ibid., 21, 22.
27 Paul Hofmann, “Women Active among Radicals in Western Europe,” New
York Times, August 14, 1977, 7.
28 Hanna-Renate Laurien, a conservative, was quoted by Kim Wilkinson, “The
Hit Women,” Newsweek, August 15, 1977, 30.
29 Michael Getler, “Women Play Growing Role in Slayings by West German
Terrorist Groups,” Washington Post, August 6, 1977.
30 Ibid.
31 Barbara Victor, The Army of Roses: Inside the World of Palestinian Women
Suicide Bombers (New York: Rodale, 2003), 19.
Women, Children, and Terrorism 173
32 James Bennett, “Arab Press Glorifies Bomber as Heroine,” New York Times,
February 11, 2002, 8.
33 Victor, 19.
34 Ibid.
35 Christopher Dickey and Gretel C. Kovach, “Married to Jihad,” Newsweek,
January 14, 2002, 48.
36 Ness, 361.
37 Ibid., 363.
38 Ibid., 366.
39 Ibid., 364; quotes Adele Balasingham, the wife of a close advisor to the Tamil
Tiger leadership.
40 Harmon, 219, 220.
41 Cunningham, 180.
42 Steven Lee Myers, “Female Suicide Bombers Unnerve Russians,” New York
Times, August 7, 2003, 1.
43 Hamas’s first female suicide bomber was Reem al-Reyashi, a twenty-two-
year-old mother of two small children. Yassin was quoted in Greg Myre,
“Gaza Mother, 22, Kills Four Israeli Soldiers,” New York Times, January 15,
2004, A3.
44 Shoot the Women First was therefore chosen as the title of a book explor-
ing the phenomenon of female terrorists. See Eileen MacDonald, Shoot the
Women First (New York: Random House, 1992).
45 Jessica Stern, “When Bombers Are Women,” Washington Post, December 18,
2003, A35.
46 Brigadier-General Gadi Shamni, the Gaza divisional commander, was
quoted in Chris McGreal, “Human-Bomb Mother Kills Four Israelis at Gaza
Checkpoint,” The Guardian, January 15, 2004, 17.
47 C. Christine Fair and Bryan Shephard, “Who Supports Terrorism? Evidence
from Fourteen Muslim Countries,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 29
(2006): 51–74.
48 Cataldo Neuberger and Valentini, especially ch. 1.
49 https://news.vice.com/video/the-islamic-state-part-2?utm_source=vicenews
twitter, accessed December 20, 2014.
50 The video was released on January 13, 2015, but was soon removed from ISIS
sites.
51 The text of the speech is available at www.un.org/children/conflict/english/
16-jun-2010open-debate-security-council-statement.html, accessed July 10,
2010.
52 Mia Bloom, “Analysis: Women and Children Constitute the New Faces
of Terrorism,” CNN.com, August 6, 2012, http://security.blogs.cnn.com/
2012/08/06/analysis-women-and-children-constitute-the-new-faces-of-terror/,
accessed July 11, 2015.
53 “Afghanistan Girl Wearing Suicide Vest Detained,” www.bbc.com/news/
world-asia-25620543, accessed July 10, 2015.
54 Ibid.
55 Alex Matthews, “Two Girls of Just SEVEN Blow Themselves up in a Suicide
Bomb Attack at a Market in Nigeria,” Daily Mail, December 11, 2017, www.
dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4022264/Girls-aged-7-8-stage-suicide-attack-
Nigeria.html, accessed May 21, 2018.
8 Common Threads
Goals, Targets, and Tactics

Although some persons are psychologically more prone to become ter-

rorists than others, it would be a mistake to dismiss terrorists and their
deeds as crazy or capricious. Instead, as Bruce Hoffman has noted, a
terrorist group’s course of action—the selection of targets and tactics—is
shaped by a variety of factors, among them the organization’s ideology.1
Indeed, there is little doubt that the ideology of a group, whether well
or ill defined, determines the goals, the targets or victims, and, to some
degree, the tactics or methods of terror as well. The size of a terrorist
group matters, too. Comparing the small Al Qaeda Central group with
organizations such as Hezbollah, Hamas, or ISIS in the context of social
movement theory, it is obvious that the latter three are far stronger in
terms of numbers and on that account get the greatest amount of atten-
tion and have the greatest impact on friends and foes as they display their
repertoire of violent performances. But there are also exceptions to this
rule, namely, when a relatively small terrorist group or cell—or even a
lone wolf—manages to carry out acts of catastrophic terrorism.
As for the goals, terrorists tend to have two sets of political objectives,
namely, short-term and long-term goals, and, typically, they have both
sets in mind when they plan and execute an act of violence. In the case
of Lebanese and Palestinian groups that were responsible for a series of
hijackings and kidnappings in the 1970s and 1980s, the short-term objec-
tive most of the time was to win the release of imprisoned comrades. One
shorter-term goal of Hezbollah was to force the pullback of American
and French troops from Lebanon. Once these forces had been withdrawn
following a horrific terror strike against their bases near Beirut in 1983,
the group explained its ultimate long-term goal in an “Open Letter to
Downtrodden in Lebanon and the World”:

As for Israel, we consider it the American spearhead in our Islamic

world. It is the usurping enemy that must be fought until the usurped
right is returned to its owners . . . This Islamic resistance must con-
tinue, grow, and escalate, with God’s help, and must receive from
all Muslims in all parts of the world utter support, aid, backing, and
Common Threads 175
participation so that we may be able to uproot this cancerous germ
and obliterate it from existence.2

When the Weather Underground, the Symbionese Liberation Army, or

the Baader-Meinhof Red Army Faction (RAF) pulled off bank robber-
ies, their short-term goals were clear: They wanted money to support
their lives in the underground. But they rationalized their crimes and
their booty as means to further their ultimate or long-term goals—
revolutionary systemic changes. In the case of the RAF, this meant
nothing short of an international revolution. As one of the RAF’s
members described it,

Even if the masses in the European metropolis don’t put themselves

on the side of the revolution—the working class among us is privi-
leged and takes part in the exploitation of the Third World—the only
possibility for those who build the Vanguard here, who take part
in the struggle here, is to destroy the infra-structure of imperialism,
destroy the apparatus.3

Do Terrorists Achieve Their Goals?

If one considers the philosophy and objectives of the Baader-Meinhof
group and associated cells, it is crystal clear that they failed to achieve, or
even further, their ultimate or strategic goals. However, they were quite
successful in realizing their short-term or tactical objectives, such as the
release of fellow terrorists. In this respect, the West German radical left
was representative of other left-wing terrorists of this period in that these
movements often did succeed in their short-term agendas. The same is
true of other types of terrorists (right-wing, nationalist, single-issue, etc.)
as well. Given this mixed bag of successes and failures, it has been argued
that “the scorecard of struggle between nation-states and terrorists is not
so clear.”4 While acknowledging terrorists’ tactical successes, Robert A.
Feary concluded in regard to their ultimate objectives that the result “is
hardly a source of encouragement for terrorists.”5
To be sure, the battlefield of terrorism is littered with utter failure
in terms of long-term or ultimate strategic goals. But there were David-
beats-Goliath results as well. One of the terrorist success stories was
written by the Irgun Zvai Leumi, a Jewish militant group that operated
in what was then the British mandate in Palestine, which committed ter-
rorist acts against British targets. The most deadly and most notorious
of these attacks targeted the British headquarters at the David Hotel in
Jerusalem in 1946, resulting in the deaths of ninety-one persons. The
terrorist campaign led to the withdrawal of the British from Palestine
and the establishment of the state of Israel soon thereafter. According to
David Fromkin,
176 Terrorism
Of course, Britain might have withdrawn anyway, at some other
time or for some other reason. But that is really beside the point, for
the Irgun wanted independence then and there, in order to open up
the country for refugees from Hitler’s Europe. They got what they
wanted when they wanted it by doing it their own way.6

Similarly, the terrorist tactics of the National Liberation Front (FLN)

forced France to withdraw from its North African colony of Algeria and
open the way to Algeria’s national independence.
So, does terrorism work? Sometimes it does, in that one “can find,
well before Yassir Arafat’s reception at the United Nations in 1974, his-
torical illustrations of terrorism’s efficacy.”7 However, citing the cases
of Israel and Algeria, Fromkin has argued, “Terrorism wins only if you
respond to it in the way that the terrorists want you to.”8 Philip Jenkins
concluded that the case of the Algerian FLN demonstrated that terrorism
and terrorists can realize their long-term goals. According to Jenkins,

Several other movements have made the transition from loathed

terrorists to respected politicians. At some stages of its history, the
African National Congress used terrorist actions, but in 1994, the
ANC became the governing party of South Africa, the most powerful
state in black Africa. In Northern Ireland, the Irish Republican Army
has often employed savage violence against civilians and noncom-
batants, of a sort that can only be described as terrorism. By the late
1990s, leading IRA supporter Gerry Adams was a prominent figure
in Northern Irish politics and a member of the British Parliament. In
Israel, too, the condemned Jewish terrorists of the 1940s had by the
1980s risen to the status of respected political leaders.9

All in all, then, the terrorist rate of success is pretty high when it comes
to short-term goals but quite low when it comes to long-term objectives.
Yet, the fact that some terrorist movements did accomplish their ultimate
goals in the past continues to encourage contemporary terrorists’ belief
that they, too, may become exceptions to the rule.

The Selection of Targets

Once an ideological rationale has been embraced and the ultimate or
long-term goal or goals have been established, the range of acceptable
targets “is determined by a number of factors, and the terrorists’ ide-
ology is central to this process, not only because it provides the initial
dynamic for the terrorists’ actions, but because it sets out the moral
framework within which they operate.”10 Ideology is more important
than other factors because the doctrine “defines how the members of
a group see the world around them.”11 More importantly, the terrorist
Common Threads 177
doctrine identifies the pool of enemies from which the victims will be
selected. The West German RAF, for example, considered the United
States and NATO (including West Germany, a member state) as the core
of the hated imperialist system. Thus, American citizens and NATO rep-
resentatives and facilities were logical and legitimate targets. While the
Italian Red Brigades (RB) shared the RAF’s hatred of the global imperial-
ist evil, in reality the movement’s ultimate goal was the removal of the
Italian regime. The result was, as C. J. M. Drake has pointed out, that
the German left-wing terrorists’ priority targets were the U.S. military
and high-level German officials in politics and the corporate world. The
RAF picked as victims individuals whom the group perceived as symbols
of gross injustices and wrongdoing. Italian terrorists, on the other hand,
attacked mostly low and middle-level targets—with a few exceptions,
such as the kidnapping and killing of former Prime Minister Aldo Moro
in 1978. Nearly all of the RB’s targeted persons were Italians.12
The examples of the RAF and RB demonstrate that even when
groups share the same ideological framework and the same enemies,
they can differ in the selection of their victims. For the Italian terrorists,
all police officers were legitimate and explicitly selected targets; for the
West German terrorists, low-level police officers were never intentional
targets—even though several were killed by accident during terror-
ist operations. Inside the West German terrorist movement, a marked
change occurred after the founders of the RAF—Ulrike Meinhof, Horst
Mahler, and Andreas Baader—had been arrested. On several occasions,
their “heirs” targeted “innocent” people with no symbolic meaning.
This was the case in several hijackings of airplanes. Reportedly, the RAF
founders rejected these strikes against innocents as the “willful dilution
of the moral thrust of the first RAF by later recruits,” and one of them,
Klaus Juenschke, complained about “this degenerate crew that has the
nerve . . . to boast of this cowardly murder and to present it as a new
quality in the anti-imperialist struggle . . . in Western Europe.”13 By and
large, however, even the new generation of German terrorists adhered to
the careful selection of military, political, or corporate targets.
For many years, anti-American terrorism affected civilians who seemed
to be randomly selected because they happened to be at the wrong place
at the wrong time. However, often the victims were “not selected purely
at random.”14 Instead, terrorists targeted U.S. citizens, persons carry-
ing Israeli passports, members of a particular religious group (namely
Jews), or simply those who visited a particular country. The Lebanese
terrorists who hijacked a TWA airliner in 1985, for example, collected all
passports and asked one of the flight attendants to sort out Israelis and
passengers with Jewish-sounding names. After a terrorist assault on Lod
Airport in Israel in 1972, during which a number of foreign tourists were
killed, one of the terrorists explained that “there are no innocent tourists
in Israel.”15 The rationale was that if you are not for us, you are against
178 Terrorism
us, or, as some terrorists have put it, “If you are not part of the solution,
you are part of the problem.”16 Similarly, following the first World Trade
Center bombing in 1993, the perpetrators of the first major international
terrorist act on American soil stated,

The American people are responsible for the actions of their govern-
ment and they must question all of the crimes that their government
is committing against other people. Or they—Americans—will be the
targets of our operations that could diminish them.17

Osama bin Laden explained his jihad against all Americans in similar
terms. He explicitly cited the will of God as the ultimate endorsement
when he wrote, “All these crimes and sins committed by the Americans
are a clear declaration of war on God, his messenger, and Muslims.”18
In the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, members of Palestinian
terrorist groups, too, have rationalized the indiscriminate targeting of
Israelis on the basis of what they consider the justice of their cause. This
mindset is reflected in the remarks of Palestinian militants:

The organization did not impose any limits with regards to damage
or scope or nature of the armed attacks. The aim was to kill as many
Jews as possible and there was no moral distinction between poten-
tial victims, whether soldiers, women or children.
When it came to moral considerations, we believed in the justice of
our cause . . . I don’t recall ever being troubled by moral questions.19

Whereas Al Qaeda Central was all along a rather small group that often
put years of planning into the preparation of spectacular attacks, the
comparably huge Islamic State’s strike policy was more along the line
of Palestinian groups and their goal to strike as often as possible killing
one, two, or more persons at a time. Thus, ISIS’s media center issued
call after call for lone wolves to attack infidels wherever they are—with
whatever means. The idea is that many small attacks will have similar
or stronger effects than infrequent major strikes in that they most of
all intimidate and frighten the enemy. While ISIS told followers repeat-
edly to target members of the military and police officers primarily, in
other appeals the directive is to kill anyone, to kill indiscriminately. The
mastermind and perpetrator of the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995,
Timothy McVeigh, also justified the indiscriminate killing of innocents
for his cause. After he had disclosed his plan to bomb the Alfred P.
Murrah Federal Building to his friend Michael Fortier, he was asked
about the fate of all the people in the building. McVeigh answered,
“Think about the people as if they were storm troopers in Star Wars.
They may be individually innocent, but they are guilty because they
work for the Evil Empire.”20
Common Threads 179
In sum, then, the overall ideological framework and the associated
assignment of blame for their grievances will guide some terrorists to
select a limited number of target types and others to pinpoint huge groups
of people, even a whole nation or several nations, as legitimate targets.

Terrorist Methods: From Primitive Bombs to WMD

As noted earlier, one can use social movement theory to study and
understand terrorist movements. Whether a movement is nonviolent or
violent, the goal is to stage public performances that draw the attention
of the larger public and political leaders. While violence in public places
always gets a great deal of attention, those actors with the most shocking
repertoire of performances receive the greatest attention. Terrorists are
well aware of this and justify violence as the only means of getting the
attention they need and deserve. Describing the mindset of terrorists as
they justify their violent means to achieve political ends, J. Bowyer Bell
observed that for terrorists,

the recourse to violence, often the last option, is a legitimate means

to shape the future. The present is intolerable and violence the only
way. As one Palestinian fedayi said, “We would throw roses if it
would work.” Since it does not, they throw bombs.21

The metaphor of the rose-throwing terrorist is, of course, in sharp con-

trast to the real-life damage that terrorists have caused for many years
and to the fact that terrorists have used all kinds of violent methods—
from stabbing or strangling their victims to dispersing nerve gas. The
most obvious reason for changes in terrorist tactics over time was sim-
ply the availability of ever more convenient and potent means to attack
and harm the targets of terrorism. Throughout the centuries, terrorists
embraced each new technology for their purposes, from the revolver to
sticks of dynamite, fertilizer bombs, rockets, and sarin gas. Advances
in transportation technology, too, have affected the choice of terrorist
methods as the derailment of trains, the hijacking of airplanes and ships,
the suicide bombing of crowded buses, or the explosion of car or truck
bombs have attested to—not to mention the attacks of 9/11, when terror-
ists turned airliners into devastating missiles.
The selection of one or more targets and of the methods of attack go
hand in hand. Both decisions are affected by the following factors:

•• The degree of access to targets;

•• The level of protection provided for targets;
•• The general state of counterterrorist measures in the targeted society;
•• The risks involved for the attacker(s);
•• The probability of carrying out a successful mission.
180 Terrorism
For terrorists, nothing is more important than executing an act of terror
successfully. As George Habash put it, “The main point is to select tar-
gets where success is 100% assured.”22 There are additional factors that
figure into the selection of the particular terrorist method to be used in a
given operation:

•• The terrorists’ level of training and skills;

•• The availability of financial resources, mobility, and hideouts;
•• The available weaponry;
•• The decision either to limit a strike to the immediate victim(s) and
spare innocent bystanders or to attack indiscriminately regardless of
the number of innocent bystanders.

Modern terrorists have a broad range of choices when deciding on a par-

ticular mode of attack. Over thirty years ago, terrorism experts Robert
Kupperman and Darrell Trent warned that terrorists were not only using
“pistols, submachine guns, and bombs” but that they also had attempted
to use “heat-seeking, surface-to-air rockets (SA-7s) and Soviet-made anti-
tank weapons (RPG-7s) and that German terrorists had threatened to
disperse mustard gas and nerve agents.”23 The more sophisticated among
terrorist groups often write and distribute their own instruction manuals
that describe the range of weapons recommended for terrorist strikes.
Thus, the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) issued a pamphlet
describing various tactics, “including preparation and use of a variety
of explosives, special culvert bombs for burial beneath roadways, and
deployment of snipers. The text also mentioned submachine guns, pis-
tols, grenades, rifles, automatic rifles, mortars, and rocket launchers.”
According to one expert, “All these [weapons] have been deployed in
past strikes by the IRA, and all remain in regular service today. In that
respect the IRA was very typical for contemporary terrorism.”24 This
IRA list of suitable terrorist weapons shows that contemporary terrorist
groups have access to a larger variety of weapons.

Most Common Methods of Terrorist Attacks

•• Bombings;
•• Assassinations;
•• Suicide attacks;
•• Kidnapping/hostage-taking;
•• Attacks on maritime targets;
•• Missile attacks;
•• Mass disruption/mass destruction.

The bombing of targets is by far the most often used terrorist method
with the distinct type of suicide bombing not far behind. In 2016,
Common Threads 181
54 percent of all recorded terrorist attacks were bombings, including
suicide missions; 21 percent were armed assaults; 10 percent were
hostage-taking; 9 percent were facility or infrastructure attacks; and
6 percent were assassinations. Most notable about those statistics was
that the number of suicide attacks decreased by 4 percent but that they
were more lethal than non-suicide terrorism.
Terrorist actions result in either conclusive incidents or incidents of
duration. Bombings, assassinations, and suicide missions are conclusive
incidents because the actual acts occur in fractions of seconds—armed
attacks can last longer—whereas hijackings and kidnappings are inci-
dents of duration because these terrorist events last for longer periods of
time—hours, days, weeks, months, or even years. Although in a different
league in terms of the likely damage, terrorism aimed at causing mass dis-
ruption and mass destruction also fits the category of conclusive incident
as far as carrying out these tactics is concerned. The following sections
summarize the characteristics of various terrorist methods or tactics.

Bombing
For a long time, terrorists have preferred bombing to all other methods of
attack because no other weapons are as readily available as incendiary or
explosive devices. Just as important, this is an “easily learned technique
that can be undertaken with minimal risk to the perpetrator” in that the
“bomber operates with time and distance on his side.”25 Putting timers
on devices allows perpetrators to detonate the explosives at the time of
their choosing. Bombs come in many forms and “the possible operations
for their use are almost infinite.”26 In most instances, terrorists’ bombs
are of the “do-it-yourself” variety because, as experts know, crude but
potent bombs “can be fabricated from seemingly innocuous materials
found in the open market.”27 Detailed instructions on the ingredients of
bombs and how to mix or assemble them are readily and legally available
in bookstores, in libraries, and on the Internet.
The website of the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), for example, has
posted the “ALF Primer,” which describes in detail how to build simple
incendiary devices to commit arson, how best to place them in targeted
facilities, and how to avoid being caught by the police. In the “Getting
Started” section of the primer, the ALF details a “simple way to cre-
ate an incendiary device” and a “different version of th