SWC Poll: What Motivates Islamist Terrorism against the West?

[tequila]

I'd like to get a poll of what SWC Members think, especially in the wake of thought-provoking post by David Kilcullen.

What motivates Islamist terrorism against the West?

I'm not speaking about Islamist terrorism against, say, Shia marketplaces or Algerian parliament buildings, but rather against Western targets: the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, Madrid rail stations, and London subways.

1) Is it principally the foreign policy of the West? No ideological judgment about whether said policy is correct or not required here.

2) Or is it principally an inevitable cultural/religious/ideological clash?

3) Something else?

[Mark O'Neill]

Perhaps, there are a couple of problems with the questions as posed:

1. The "West" does not have cohesive unitary foreign policy. It is not a sovereign state. Just like the 'Islamic world' is not unitary or cohesive. Both are contructs that we use without thinking too much about what we really mean.

2. When we talk about 'ideology' what specifically do we mean? Islam is not Catholicism, with a centralised intepretation of dogma codified by the Vatican. There is even radical differentiation between the various strands of 'extreme' islamism? Similarly, which culture? Indonesia is vastly different to Iraq which is different to Nigeria etc etc

I have no doubt that the poll will generate plenty of opinion, a problem will be the broad interpretations by respondents of the underlying assumptions of the as questions posed.

[tequila]

Mark, I largely agree with you that the question has inherent flaws in that it is very broad. I will do my best to narrow by clarifying "Islamist terrorism" to be transnational terrorism committed by al-Qaeda and groups closely aligned with it. I think that we do need to dis-aggregate (to steal from Kilcullen) a lot of groups which are Islamist out of the equation and avoid making more enemies than absolutely necessary.

But I also believe that there is an international movement of very violent Sunni Islamism out there, led by al-Qaeda, which is principally targeting the West. The question I am asking is what is the prime motivator of this particular movement.

[Mark O'Neill]

Tequila, I think your qualification solves much of the problem - thanks.

Personally, I think many of Marc Sageman's conclusions about why the 'foot soldiers' join AQ are useful. To me, why these guys do it is far more important than what OBL thinks - if no-one chooses to follow him then he is literally just a lone voice in the wilderness (albeit it with frequent IT connections). Their reasons (ie how OBL's IO resonates with them) should be the object of our efforts.

One aspect that I found compelling in Sageman's work is that it is based on evidence gained from the terrorists themselves, rather than theories generated by beltway pundits.

Cheers

Mark

[SoiCowboy]

The management level of Al-Qaeda are fundamentalist Islams version of a military industrial complex. They've been fighting since Afghanistan and war is now a way of life.

The foot soldiers motivation varies. Three motives that stand out for me in showing motivation to fight is complex would be:

I can't remember the source but it went that 50% of Al Qaeda caught in Iraq were Yemenis who came to fight for the money rather than anything else.

Some of the Al Qaeda just seem to do jihad as a just another thing that you're expected to do as a 'man', go to stripclubs, drink, blow up a few hundred people. Not exactly your stereotypical jihadis; examples would be the 9/11 bombers and the bluewater bombers.

Others become jihadis because how else can the evil crusaders being directed by the Jewish ZOG machine be stopped?

[Steve Blair]

I lean more toward an "Other" response, because over time the reasons will change and will also be manipulated by those in the higher command ranks (as much as those may or may not matter for what develops on the ground).

I for one believe that over time the basic ideology of a terrorist group (in the classic sense) really doesn't matter. They become addicted to the cycle of revenge killing, or it becomes so institutionalized in their operations that the original reason(s) for the killing don't matter. They may always have an IO reason for their killing, but at the ground level that reason is more a slogan than an actual belief system.

That said, it is always important to make some fine distinctions with these groups. Some, especially the political wings, are obviously open to maneuver. Others, such as the hard-core jihadist/Provo IRA/whatever cells, are not.

For the upper ranks, I would say that motivations tend more toward a mix of response 1 and 2, with the shading depending on the group in question. There is always a cultural component, but that can be triggered by policy decisions as well.