“Why is terror Islamist?”

Stephen Fish from Berkeley asks this question in the Washington Post Monkey Cage. The core of his answer:

…the truth is, in the contemporary world, Christians won big. And the frustration and humiliation that Muslims now feel as a result can help explain terrorism. That frustration and humiliation is rooted in politics rather than sex and in modern experience rather than deep history. And it has little to do with the Koran.

I cannot agree more: this helps explain Islamist terrorism, at least in this moment. I believe that humiliation and perceived injustice are much more powerful motivators than many people believe. Though scientific evidence remains elusive.

But I’ll answer Fish’s question in slightly stronger terms: no way. Terror is not Islamist. Terror is a tool, used not only by the weak or humiliated but by the powerful.

We can quibble about definitions, but the big thing to me is the following: it is violence where the intended target is not the person hurt, but the wider audience that identifies with that victim. Terror is a weapon of mass intimidation.

From the Irish Republican Army to the military wing of the African National Congress (of Nelson Mandela fame), terror has usually been a tool of the weak or oppressed.

But look to Robert Mugabe (or any other thuggish dictator who punishes a few opposition supporters to frighten the many). Terror isn’t simple the tool of those out of power.

Colombian Marxists. Italian mafias. Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army. Sierra Leonean rebels. They massacre and beat and mutilate to send messages. The line from acts of war to acts of terror is blurry.

And the United States military? I ask you to consider that the targets of drone strikes are not limited to those blown to smithereens.

28 Responses

  1. Agree completely that it’s injustice/humiliation may be the primary motivator. We have a qualitative study coming out shortly on this–seeing similar patterns in Afghanistan, Somalia and Colombia. And we have quantitative data hinting at this from Afghanistan and Somalia.

  2. What profound and geostrategic motives we ascribe to these gentlemen. Should we listen to the self-justifications of the Unabomber or Adam Lanza? Frustration and humiliation, sure, but the more “domestic” it is, the more we locate this in individual psychology. Always the young(ish), almost always men with a low opportunity cost of time spent training/being socialized in preparation for self-destruction, the same romance of violent spectacle and “at least now I’ll be remembered” cries. All that is unique in some cases of “Islamic” terrorism is the occasional well-organized funding and socialization group. Thankfully our billionaires have other preferred causes. On the right, we dress it up as a menace worthy of defense spending, on the left we dress it up as if these individuals were cashing checks in some bizarre, grand-historical moral ledger. States wage wars, and of course fear is a part of that. Young male misfits sometimes find meaning in politically extreme beliefs, and they do so here, there and everywhere.