Motivations and Islamic Terrorism

Motivations and Islamic Terrorism

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Islamic terrorism is inspired by media and numerous Quranic verses that justify or encourage the attacking of infidels. Robert Pape, has argued that at least terrorists utilizing suicide attacks — a particularly effective^[9] form of terrorist attack—are driven not by Islamism but by “a clear strategic objective: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland.”^[10]

However, Martin Kramer who debated Pape on origins of suicide bombing, countered Pape’s position that reason for suicide terrorism is not just a strategic logic but also terrorist’s reinterpretation of Islam to provide a moral logic. For example, Hizballah initiated suicide bombings after a complex reworking of the concept of martyrdom. Kramer explains that the Israeli occupation of Lebanon raised the temperature necessary for this reinterpretation of Islam, but occupation alone would not have been sufficient for suicide terrorism.^[11]. “The only way to apply a brake to suicide terrorism,” Kramer argues, “is to undermine its moral logic, by encouraging Muslims to see its incompatibility with their own values.”

In particular, scholar Scott Atran, research director and involved in NATO group studying suicide terrorism, points out that there is no single root cause of terrorism. Greatest predictors of suicide bombings, Atran concludes, is not religion but group dynamics: “small-group dynamics involving friends and family that form the diaspora cell of brotherhood and camaraderie on which the rising tide of martyrdom actions is based”.^[12]

Former CIA analyst Michael Scheuer‘s states that the Al Qaeda Islamic terror attacks against America are motivated not by a hatred of American culture and religion but by the belief that U.S. foreign policy is a threat to Islam,^[13] condensed in the phrase “They hate us for what we do, not who we are.” U.S. foreign policy actions Scheuer believes are fueling Islamic terror include

• Unconditioned US support to Israel
• U.S. troops on Muslim holy ground in Saudi Arabia (See: United States withdrawal from Saudi Arabia)
• U.S. support for “apostate” police states in Muslim nations such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, Algeria, Morocco, and Kuwait^[14]
• The invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq
• U.S. support for the creation of the Christian state of East Timor from territory previously held by Muslim Indonesia.
• Perceived U.S. approval or support of counterinsurency against Muslim insurgents in India, Philippines, Chechnia, Uyghur separatists in western China, Palestine.^[15]

Some other academics argue that terrorism should be seen as a strategic reaction to American power,’ – that America is an empire, and empires provoked resistance in the form of terrorism. The Russian, Ottoman, and Habsburg Empires, for example, all suffered from terrorist attacks and had terrorist organisations – the Black Hand, Young Bosnia, Narodnaya Volya – spawned from their multiple ethnic, religious, and national peoples (Serb, Macedonian, and Bosnian).^[16]