Press, 1975); J. Spencer Trimingham, The Sufi Orders in
Islam (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971).
terrorism
Terrorism is today used to describe many different
kinds of violence. As a result, the meaning of the
word terrorism is highly contested. Most individual
states, and much of the international community
in the form of international organizations and law,
define terrorism as the use of illegal force by non-
state actors. This definition focuses attention on
the violence of nonstate actors—often understood
by those who carry out such violence as resistance
to a particular aUthority or past violent activity
perpetrated by that authority—at the expense of
attention to violence perpetrated by the state.
Rather than focusing on the causes that lead
to violent resistance, discussions of terrorism are
often limited to questions about the legitimate use
of force. However, a more general definition of the
term emerges from understanding the dynamics of
the conflicts thought to include terrorism or violent
resistance: the use of violence against nonmilitary
targets in order to create an environment of fear and
intimidation for the purposes of achieving a desired
end. This definition avoids a judgment of validity of
one kind of violence over another, state and non-
state, legitimate and illegitimate, for example, and
focuses instead on the use of a particular kind of
violence and means of achieving a desired end.
Since the 1970s, in Western media and public
imagination terrorism has become increasingly
synonymous with islam. From the 1972 killing of
Israeli Olympic athletes at the hands of Palestin-
ian gunmen in Munich, Germany, to the events of
September 11, 2001, images creating the impres-
sion of an essential link between violence and
Islam have been ubiquitous. This is not to say that
the word terrorism has not been used to describe
violence in other parts of the world throughout
this time, such as in Northern Ireland, South
Africa, and the Oklahoma City bombing in the
United States (to name just a few cases). None-
theless, terrorism and Islam, in the eyes of some
western European and North American commen-
tators, are inextricably linked; the overemphasis of
the concept of Jihad as “holy war” in interpreting
Islam, among both Muslims and non-Muslims,
also contributes to this image. It is essential to
note, however, that the Arabic term for terrorism,
irhab, is a recent addition to the Arabic language.
It does not appear in the qUran nor is it found in
any hadith. The relationship between terrorism
and Islam, then, must be understood in the con-
texts in which violence is termed terrorism.
The kind of violence generally called terrorism
is not particular to any religious tradition or polit-
ical system. In the previous two decades, violence
against nonstate actors has been perpetrated by
Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and Hindus
as well as by nonbelievers and adherents of local
religious traditions, all living in varied political
systems. At the same time, members of all reli-
gious traditions and citizens in states with differ-
ent political systems have denounced violence of
this nature as inimical with the tradition or system
in question. When thinking about terrorism, then,
it is more useful to focus on the fact of violence
and the kinds of violence at work as well as the
dynamics in which the violence is found than it is
on whether or not such force is legitimate accord-
ing to a given tradition.
See also arab-israeli conFlict; gUlF Wars;
hamas; hizbUllah; al-qaida; sUicide.
Caleb ElfenbeinFurther reading: Giovanna Borradori, Philosophy in a
Time of Terror (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2003); Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003).testimony See shahada.
theology
The systematic study and teaching of religious
beliefs about God by experts who hold thosetheology 667 J