Islamic terrorism
Islamic terrorism is a form of religious terrorism carried out by fundamentalist militant Islamists and Islamic extremists with the aim of achieving various political or religious objectives, such as jihad and caliphate.
Since at least the 1990s, Islamist terrorist incidents have occurred around the world and targeted both Muslims and non-Muslims. Most attacks have been concentrated in Muslim-majority countries, with studies finding 80–90% of terrorist victims to be Muslim.
The annual number of fatalities from terrorist attacks grew sharply from 2011 to 2014, when it reached a peak of 33,438, before declining to 13,826 in 2019. From 1979 to April 2024, five Islamic extremist groups—the Taliban, Islamic State,
Boko Haram, al-Shabaab, and al-Qaeda—were responsible for more than 80% of all victims of Islamist terrorist attacks. In some of the worst-affected Muslim-majority regions, these terrorists have been met by armed, independent resistance groups. Islamist terrorism has also been roundly condemned by prominent Islamic figures and groups.
Justifications given for attacks on civilians by Islamic extremist groups come from their interpretations of the Quran, the hadith, and Sharia. These killings include retribution by armed jihad for the perceived injustices of unbelievers against Muslims; the belief that many self-proclaimed Muslims have violated Islamic law and are disbelievers ; the perceived necessity of restoring Islam by establishing Sharia as the source of law, including by reestablishing the Caliphate as a pan-Islamic state ; the glory and heavenly rewards of martyrdom ; and the belief in the supremacy of Islam over all other religions. Justification of violence without permitted declarations of takfir has been criticized.
The use of the phrase "Islamic terrorism" is disputed. In Western political speech, it has variously been called "counter-productive", "highly politicized, intellectually contestable" and "damaging to community relations", by those who disapprove of the characterization 'Islamic'. It has been argued that "Islamic terrorism" is a misnomer for what should be called "Islamist terrorism".
Tactics employed include kidnappings, sexual enslavement, public executions and suicide bombings, with followers urged to use "guns, bombs, vehicles, knives or a combination of methods to increase casualties."
Terminology
and Tony Blair repeatedly stated that the war against terrorism has nothing to do with Islam. Others inside and out of the Islamic world who oppose its use on the grounds there is no connection between Islam and terrorism include Imran Khan, the prime minister of Pakistan, and academic Bruce Lawrence.Former US president Barack Obama explained why he used the term "terrorism" rather than "Islamic terrorism" in a 2016 town hall meeting saying, "There is no doubt,... terrorist organizations like Al-Qaeda or ISIL – They have perverted and distorted and tried to claim the mantle of Islam for an excuse for basically barbarism and death... But what I have been careful about when I describe these issues is to make sure that we do not lump these murderers into the billion Muslims that exist around the world..."
It has been argued that "Islamic terrorism" is a misnomer for what should be called "Islamist terrorism".
In January 2008, the US Department of Homeland Security Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties issued a report titled Terminology to Define the Terrorists: Recommendations from American Muslims, which opened with
The office "consulted with some of the leading U.S.-based scholars and commentators on Islam to discuss the best terminology to use when describing the terrorist threat." Among the experts they consulted,
History
'''Growth in Islamist attacks and killings around the world'''Pre-20th century
Whether Islamic terrorism is a recent phenomenon is disputed. Some maintain that there was no terrorism in Islam prior to late 20th and early 21st century, while others, such as Ibn Warraq, claim that from the beginning of Islam, "violent movements have arisen" such as the Kharijites, Sahl ibn Salama, Barbahari, Kadizadeli movement, Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, etc., "seeking to revive true Islam, which its members felt had been neglected in Muslim societies, who were not living up to the ideals of the earliest Muslims". The 7th century Kharijites, according to some, started from an essentially political position but developed extreme doctrines that set them apart from both mainstream Sunni and Shi'a Muslims. The group was particularly noted for adopting a radical approach to takfir, whereby they declared Muslim opponents to be unbelievers and therefore worthy of death, and also by their strong resemblance to contemporary ISIL.1960s–1970s
During the era of the anti-colonial struggle in North Africa and the Middle East, coinciding with the creation of Israel in 1948, a series of Marxist-Leninist and anti-imperialist movements swept throughout the Arab and Islamic world. These movements were nationalist and revolutionary, but not Islamic. However, their view that terrorism could be effective in reaching their political goals generated the first phase of modern international terrorism. In the late 1960s, Palestinian secular movements such as Al Fatah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine began to target civilians outside the immediate arena of conflict. Following Israel's victory over Arab forces in 1967, Palestinian leaders began to realize that the Arab world was unable to defeat Israel in the battlefield. At the same time, lessons drawn from the Jewish struggle against the British in Palestine and revolutionary movements across Latin America, North Africa and Southeast Asia, motivated the Palestinians to turn away from guerrilla warfare towards urban terrorism. These movements were secular in nature, though their international reach served to spread terrorist tactics worldwide. Moreover, the Arab Cold War between mostly US-aligned conservative Islamic monarchies and Soviet-aligned secular national-revolutionary governments inspired a growth of religiously motivated Islamic movements in the Middle East, supported by Saudi Arabia, which came into conflict with the predominant secular nationalist ideologies at the time.The book The Revolt by Menachem Begin, leader of the Irgun militia and future Israeli Prime Minister, influenced both Carlos Marighella's urban guerrilla theory and Osama bin Laden's Islamist al-Qaeda organization. Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman in the book Rise and Kill First asserted that Hezbollah's 1983 campaign of coordinated terrorist attacks against American, French and Israeli military installations in Beirut drew inspiration from and directly mirrored the Haganah's and Irgun's 1946 bombing campaign against the British: both succeeded in creating an atmosphere of widespread fear which eventually forced the enemy to withdraw. Bergman further asserts that the influence of Israeli-sponsored terrorist operations on the emerging Islamists was also of operational nature: the Israeli proxy Front for the Liberation of Lebanon from Foreigners had carried out multiple deadly truck bombings in Lebanon long before the emergence of Hezbollah. An Israeli Mossad agent told Bergman: "I saw from a distance one of the cars blowing up and demolishing an entire street. We were teaching the Lebanese how effective a car bomb could be. Everything that we saw later with Hezbollah sprang from what they saw had happened after these operations."
The year 1979 is widely considered a turning point in the rise of religiously motivated radicalism in the Muslim world. Several events are thought to be crucial for the proliferation of Islamist terrorism in the next decade, such as the Soviet–Afghan War and unprecedented support from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the US for anti-Soviet jihadists; the Iranian Revolution and subsequent Iran–Iraq War as well as Khomeini's active support for Shia groups fighting the Israeli occupation of Lebanon; the Grand Mosque seizure in Mecca and subsequent Wahhabization of the Saudi government; and the Egypt–Israel peace treaty that was highly unpopular in some sections of the Muslim world.
According to Bruce Hoffman of the RAND Corporation, in 1980, 2 out of 64 terrorist groups were categorized as having religious motivation while in 1995, almost half were religiously motivated with the majority having Islam as their guiding force.
1980s–1990s
The Soviet–Afghan War and the subsequent anti-Soviet mujahedin war, lasting from 1979 to 1989, started the rise and expansion of terrorist groups. Since their beginning in 1994, the Pakistani-supported Taliban militia in Afghanistan has gained several characteristics traditionally associated with state-sponsors of terrorism, providing logistical support, travel documentation, and training facilities. Since 1989 the increasing willingness of religious extremists to strike targets outside immediate country or regional areas highlights the global nature of contemporary terrorism. The 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and the 11 September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, are representative of this trend.2000s–2010s
According to research by the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag, between 11 September 2001 and 21 April 2019, there were 31,221 Islamist terrorism attacks, in which at least 146,811 people were killed. Many of the victims were Muslims, including most of the victims who were killed in attacks involving 12 or more deaths.2010s
According to the Global Terrorism Index, deaths from terrorism peaked in 2014 and have fallen each year since then until 2019, making a decline of more than half from their peak. The five countries "hardest hit" by terrorism continue to be Muslims countries—Afghanistan, Iraq, Nigeria, Syria and Somalia.In 2016, four out of the five most violent groups in the world were Islamist extremists. These groups carried out 88% of the 2,916 attacks and caused 99% of the 14,017 deaths by the top five groups.