Causes and Contexts - A structural analysis of terrorism past and present

Abstract: The purpose of this study is to provide a theoretical framework that can be applied to both religious and secular terrorism. It is suggested that terrorism can be divided into two categories; practical and ideological. The first category, terrorists with practical objectives like sovereignty or end to repression, are generated by local conflicts. These local conflicts can also have a global impact, thus inspiring others sharing that ideology or religion to take up terrorism. For this second type of terrorists, ideology comes after the cause as a means to achieve an end. Ideology becomes both the means and the end. The theory is applied to two empirical cases, one being the West German terrorism of 1968-1993, the other being Islamic terrorism 1998-2005. The two cases are compared and the similarities between the two cases despite differences between religious and secular terrorism are used to support the validity of the theory. The findings indicate that secular and religious terrorism share some characteristics which could be used to analyse the emergence of terrorism past and present.