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By Stacy Reiter Neal
“Big business” and today’s transnational terrorist movements such as al-Qaeda are, at first glance, drastically different entities with radically different aims. While one embodies Western capitalism and secular values, the other rails against the established world order, envisioning a society in which religious values are paramount. Despite their near-diametric opposition in principle, however, the trajectories of multinational corporations and transnational terrorist organizations have become increasingly similar since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
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By Jeffrey Kaplan
When Professor David Rapoport gave me the opportunity to read an early draft of his groundbreaking four waves theory of modern international terrorism, I was immediately taken with it. For a scholar trained as a cultural historian, how could it be otherwise? What Dr. Rapoport had done in essence was distill a lifetime of study into a single article that identified a unifying global zeitgeist that linking terrorist movements on a global scale which had in most instances never been in direct contact with one another. These organizations, cells or tiny “grouplets” or “groupuscules” as Roger Griffin would call the right wing version of these tiny terrorist bands had previously been examined individually or reduced to the level of pawns in the hands of one of the global superpowers. Rapoport’s theory called up memories of such cultural history classics as the lyrical Western zeitgeists that defined the waning stages of the medieval world in the writings of Johann Huizinga. More recently, it echoed Arthur Schlesinger’s observations on the cycles of American history as each generation turned from public activism to private acquisition.
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By Richard Jackson
It has become something of a cliché to note that there are over 200 definitions of terrorism in existence within broader terrorism studies literature; that many terrorism scholars have given up on the definitional debate and use the term unreflectively; and that such a state of affairs hampers theoretical progress and skews terrorism research in unhelpful ways. However, the significance and consequences of the definitional debate go far beyond such narrow academic confines, important as they are to the field. Rather, the issue of definition is central to the way in which the Global War on Terror is prosecuted by the authorities both domestically and overseas. It also affects the way in which terrorism is understood and dealt with as a criminal act under international and domestic law. In the academic and cultural realms, the definition of terrorism has important implications for the way knowledge and commonsense about the subject is constructed and reproduced socially. Furthermore, it has substantial indirect consequences for individuals and groups labelled as terrorists – who may then be legally subject to torture, rendition and internment without trial – and for the “suspect communities” they belong to.
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By James J.F. Forest
During this busy holiday season, much is being said by pundits and policymakers about the potential vulnerabilities of today’s global aviation system. While no specific threats have been reported, there is a widespread fear based upon an extensive history of attacks, ranging from hijackings and in-flight bombings to surface-to-air missile. Most recently, authorities from the Saudi Arabian interior ministry arrested 172 suspected terrorists in April 2007 after uncovering a plot to hijack several airplanes and fly them into oil facilities and other critical infrastructure targets in that country.
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By Mark Sedgwick
The purpose of this short essay is to suggest a new way of looking at the old question of how Islamist terrorism differs from other and better understood forms of terrorism, using the frames of globalization and localization and of the less well known but equally important phenomenon of the “pizza effect,” the nature of which will be summarized below. Using these frames, the essay argues that research is urgently needed in one area which has so far been almost totally ignored: the impact on young Muslims living in the West, and especially in Europe, of widespread understandings of Islam as an inherently violent religion.
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By Vera Eccarius-Kelly
Ever since Turkey’s 1980 military coup, the country’s party system has failed to reflect the ideological spectrum within Turkish civil society. As a result, the past two decades have been filled with violent reactions by the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) and highly charged political challenges from Islamists. The unrest has widened existing cracks in the Kemalist paradigm—what many view as an artificial vision of secular and homogeneous Turkish nationhood. Yet despite the growing domestic dissent, representatives of the Kemalist state bureaucracy continue to espouse the same obsolete principles.
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By Sherifa Zuhur
Various Western government spokespersons or policy “professionals” have argued that we are witnessing “an internal struggle within Islam, pitting those who espouse a particular orthodoxy against those who seek a reformation of Islam.” Essentially, a battle between moderates and radicals. But who are the moderates, exactly? Why are they increasingly defined as those who support the West, secularists, or those who do not observe mainstream Muslim practices? Is this not a Western perception of moderation, informed by a discrete historical and political self-analysis that is superimposed on the Muslim world? Moreover, do moderates always seek a reformation of Islam? Or do they identify in some ways with bin Ladin’s anti-Americanism? Can they be better described, or do they overlap with other categories of Muslims like traditionalists, conservatives, or non-violent Islamists?
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By Francesco Cavatorta
While it might be too strong to suggest that the ‘Algerian scenario’ dominates the politics of the Middle East and North Africa, its importance over the last two decades in structuring the political confrontation between regimes, Islamists, secular opposition, and the international community should not be underestimated.
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