SWC Poll: What Motivates Islamist Terrorism against the West?

[marct]

Hi John,

My buddy Max Manwaring liked to use that term; personally I prefer explanation.

LOL - most of the time, I do too, since they are usually used synonymously . It might be interesting to see if his theory was actually post-dictive - we could run it through an historical data set and see how accurate it was at "predicting" historical events. My gut guess, since I still can't find a way to operationalize it , is that it wouldn't be that good.

Clearly, Huntington does NOT have a testable theory. And his model is flawed. But, I maintain that there is the core of something there that could be salvaged with promising results.

Honestly, what is at the core of his theory? The fault lines are readily observable, I agree. Do you think it would be possible to salvage a core concept or, rather, observation that could then be recast into a testable form? I would think that that is quite possible to do.

Marc