Terrorism

The Role of Religion

Religion and terrorism have a longstanding relationship. As David Rapoport has shown, some of the earliest terrorist movements on record were motivated by religion: the Jewish Zealots (1st century CE), the Muslim Assassins (11th through the 13th century), and the Hindu Thugs (13th through the 19th century). The proliferation of terrorist movements motivated by anarchist, nationalist, or left-wing goals starting in the 19th century gradually obscured the role of religion as a salient influence on terrorism, a preconception that changed in the mid-1980s with the rise to prominence of several terrorist groups associated with religious movements. The attacks perpetrated by al Qaeda on September 11, 2001, have drawn increased attention to religiously motivated terrorism, with particular emphasis on groups that are associated with Islam or that use suicide bombing.

Nonetheless, political grievances, social alienation, humiliation, poverty, and mental illness continue to form the primary focus of the study of terrorism. The challenge in discerning the relationship between religion and terrorism lies, in part, in the mixture of religious and political motivations espoused by religiously motivated terrorist groups. Even terror movements driven by an explicit religious agenda may pursue political goals in parallel or draw on a combination of politics and religion in their short-or long-term goals. Religion may provide a terrorist organization with its ultimate rationale or merely serve the proximate purpose of attracting recruits, indoctrinating members, or enhancing the group's appeal to a wider audience.

One means of disentangling these factors is to place terror movements on a continuum, ranging from those least influenced by religion, at one extreme, to those that derive most of their methods and goals from religious precepts, at the other extreme. For some separatist or revolutionary movements, such as the Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso), the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, FARC), or the Earth Liberation Front, religious doctrine seems to play no role at all. In other groups, members may identify with a religious movement without drawing on religious beliefs as a rationale for their activities. Such groups include the Irish Republican Army (IRA), the Basque Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) in Spain, the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, or separatist movements in Chechnya and Kashmir. In yet others, religion can have a significant impact on all aspects of identity and doctrine. A sampling of such groups across religious movements might include Hamas (Islamic), Kach (Jewish), the Lord's Resistance Army (Christian), Babbar Khalsa (Sikh), and Aum Shinrikyô (Buddhist).

Religiously Motivated Terror Movements

Terror groups that conceive of religion as a primary motivator for their actions rely on scripture, revelation, and theology to determine both their means and their goals. This results in constraints on action and in justifications that are absent in secular terrorist organizations. An examination of the religious beliefs that influence such terrorist movements can thus illuminate their past and future actions.

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