Philosophy Of Terrorism

This paper examines the complex relationship between religion and violence across various faith traditions, analyzing whether religious doctrines inherently promote violent behavior or merely serve as tools appropriated by political actors for their own ends. Through a comparative historical analysis and case study approach, the research investigates how theological frameworks-particularly René Girard's mimetic theory and Charles Taylor's concept of numinous violence-help explain the persistence of religiously framed conflicts. The study explores manifestations of religious violence in Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Sikhism, demonstrating how doctrinal interpretations interact with socio-political contexts to either mitigate or intensify violent tendencies. Employing discourse analysis of religious texts, historical documentation, and contemporary case studies, the research reveals that while religions contain doctrines that can be mobilized for violent purposes, violence typically emerges from the interplay between theological justifications and underlying political, economic, and cultural tensions. The findings suggest that religious violence operates through mechanisms such as the "scapegoat mechanism" and "crusade mentality," which transform political struggles into existential conflicts by framing opponents as impure or evil. This research contributes to ongoing academic debates by offering a nuanced understanding of how religious ideologies become weaponized across different traditions and historical contexts, challenging both essentialist views that religion is inherently violent and apologetic perspectives that dissociate religion entirely from violence.

For nearly a century the term "fundamentalism" has referred primarily to a set of specific Christian beliefs and an allied ultra-conservative attitude. However, usage of the term has broadened: "fundamentalism", as a term indicating the position of a "closed mind" coupled with a negative-even hostile-stance toward the status quo, has migrated into political discourse and the wider religious realm. Fundamentalism broadly names a religio-political perspective found in most, if not all, major religions. Most disturbingly, it is now associated with variant forms of religious extremism and thus religiously-oriented terrorism. And it is Islamic modalities of terrorism that, rightly or wrongly, have come to take centre-stage in current world affairs. This lecture will argue that the religious fundamentalism with which Islamist extremism is associated follows an identifiable paradigm that has wider applicability. Religious "fundamentalism" denotes, among other things, a paradigm that paves the way from the relative harmlessness of an idiosyncratic and dogmatic belief system, to the harmful reality of religiously driven and fanatically followed pathways to terrorist activity. The lecture will attempt to describe and analyse this paradigm with reference to contemporary concerns.

Questo è un libro unico, un libro di storia vissuta nel suo tempo: l'ho letto poco prima di ritornare in Europa con la mia famiglia, nel lontano 1973, avendo trascorso tre anni e mezzo viaggiando nel delta del Niger, e in altri luoghi della Nigeria in cerca di petrolio. Questo libro racconta la storia della vita di migliaia di famiglie europee, soprattutto inglesi, che hanno lasciato le loro ossa in Nigeria, nel periodo che va dalla conquista inglese all'indipendenza.

This essay investigates the political and strategic deployment of somatic vocabulary in Ulrike Meinhof's letter/poem which she wrote while incarcerated in solitary confinement in Köln-Ossendorf Prison in 1972. It links the bodily dissociation described in the poem with the breakdown of syntax, identity, and self-perception. Meinhof's poem brings the fragmented body into language-a language of repetitions, syntactic disruptions, parataxis, fragmentation, linguistic disorientation, and violent disassociation. The physical and psychic pain experienced in isolation and the imagery of the suffering body conjured up in the poem, suggest-especially to a German postwar audience-haunting associations with the Holocaust and the National Socialist treatment of unwanted persons and prisoners.

This essay investigates the political and strategic deployment of somatic vocabulary in Ulrike Meinhof's letter/poem which she wrote while incarcerated in solitary confinement in Köln-Ossendorf Prison in 1972. It links the bodily dissociation described in the poem with the breakdown of syntax, identity, and self-perception. Meinhof's poem brings the fragmented body into language-a language of repetitions, syntactic disruptions, parataxis, fragmentation, linguistic disorientation, and violent disassociation. The physical and psychic pain experienced in isolation and the imagery of the suffering body conjured up in the poem, suggest-especially to a German postwar audience-haunting associations with the Holocaust and the National Socialist treatment of unwanted persons and prisoners.

Extremism in both its vocal and violent forms is a core topic of research, as well as a priority issue standing at the top of national and international security agendas. While most of the literature is still focused on violent forms of extremism, an emerging research trend is looking at vocal extremism and radicalisation as crucial steps to understand, as Neumann said “what happens before the bomb goes off”. Within this new trend, scholars are interested in exploring the ideology of extremist groups (rather than just their methods) and the frames (schemata of interpretation) they disseminate in order to win more followers and fidelise their members. Based on the author’s previous research, as well as on relevant data extracted from the manifestos and relevant publications of emblematic groups of both ideologies, this paper compares Islamists and Eco-radicals as two forms of extremism fighting the Western-sponsored modernisation process. By exploring the meaning of “modernity”, as w...

Assuming that mere opposition to fundamentalism is counter-productive, if not hypocritical, this article calls for an understanding of the question fundamentalism seeks to answer: What is to fill the space between the 'most sacred' and the 'most mundane'? It turns out that we struggle to provide better answers. If, instead of dismissing fundamentalism as a futile reaction against modernity, the ambiguous links between fundamentalism and postmodernity are explored, it is seen that modernity, late capitalism and postmodernity are intertwined in complex ways that defy standard classifications. Fundamentalism poses important questions to the contemporary world and thus deserves some sympathy. The conclusion suggests that we should, nevertheless, prefer to the negativity of fundamentalism sources of affirmation. These may be found in the spaces of the 'most sacred' and the 'most mundane'-but not simply in 'secularity'.

Dopo il sostegno a oltranza dato all'Ucraina, l'Occidente non ha potuto che schierarsi con Israele, vittima dei massacri e degli attacchi terroristici di Hamas. E si è già cominciato a parlare, in questi giorni, di un "attacco all'Occidente" stesso, di una guerra dichiarata a tutti i Paesi occidentali da parte di quello che non è ormai neppure più considerato come un "nemico", ma come una banda di "animali umani", come li ha definiti il Ministro della difesa israeliano: un gruppo di lupi feroci, ma anche di topi di fogna, che vanno uccisi senza alcuno scrupolo, in quanto la loro vita-non più nemmeno umana-non ha alcun diritto ad essere vissuta. Quando nel nemico non riconosci più l'uomo qualsiasi atrocità diventa possibile.

With the increased requirement to incorporate counter-terrorism measures into the British education system, teachers are now expected to discuss terrorism within the classroom setting. However, this is a challenging endeavour due to the complex nature of the phenomenon, including definitional questions and links made to certain ideologies, in particular religious motivations. This paper explores my research findings from a project conducted over several years into pupils' perceptions of terrorism and its links to religion in general, as well as the specific links made with Islam, Sikhism and Christianity. To contextualise the research, a brief overview of the methods and results has been provided, followed by an analysis of the issues raised. Overall, the pupils thought that religion in general, as well as Islam in particular, was something that motivated terrorism. However, many pupils also expressed concerns about associating entire religious communities with terrorism, perceiving it as a stereotype, and expressed interest in discovering more about how and why religion was used to justify such violent attacks.

The Open University Religion, Security and Global Uncertainties The Religion and Global Uncertainties 1914-2014 project is funded under a Research Council UK Global Uncertainties Leadership Fellowship. This report offers a synopsis of the research findings from Phase 1 of this project, which examined the relationship between religion and security, including terrorism and socalled 'religious violence'. This phase had two key objectives: 10. Self-appointed 'experts' can mislead. Identified contacts at regular intervals should be regularly reassessed to ensure a dynamic, ever-changing and diverse group of representatives involved in decision-making.

This collection presents a comprehensive guide to Islamic movements in Europe, aiming to offer original, definitive perspectives on Muslims and Islam in Europe today. Louise Pears finds this essential reading for policy makers and academics alike who are concerned with Islamism, and indeed those who aim to tackle the Islamophobia that has produced conventional understandings of Islamism as threat.

This article reports in brief on an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Diasporas, Migrations and Identities (DMI) programme funded network, 'Writing British-Asian Cities', which ran between 2006 and 2009. It contends that the diverse local configuration of Asian Britain has to a large extent remained unexamined in the literature. Having organised community-based events in five English cities, an indication is given of how London's East End, Bradford, Manchester, Birmingham and Leicester have all been 'written' and represented across a variety of genres since the 1960s. Bringing the perspectives of the social sciences into conversation with the arts and humanities, the network also prioritised further reflection on certain disciplinary perspectives and crosscutting themes: history; literary/cultural production; religion; gender. Various working papers and other resources which report in more detail on the project are lodged on an interactive website, while a research group of the British Association of South Asian Studies (BASAS) has also been recently established.

Artikel ini bemsaha mmjawab bebercpa pertanyaan seputar hubungan dan kesesuaian antara Islam dan modernitasyang terus dimunculkan dan semakin diperdebatkan menyusul tragedi 11 September. Secara khusus, artikel ini mengkaji kembali secara kritis teori "benturan peradaban" (clash of civiiizations) dan penerjemahannya he dalam kampanye pemerintah Amerika Serikat tentang 'perang global melawan teror" {global war on terror). Argumen utama artikel ini adalah bahwaparadigma "benturan peradaban"yang sangat terkait dengan proyek unilateral *perangglobal melawan teror"pimpinan AmerikaSerikat secara konseptual menyesatkan dan secara empiris gagal menjawab persoalan radikalisme dan fundamentalisme Islam. Dikemukakan bahwa ketimbang mengkampanyekan 'benturan peradaban" dan menggunakan pendekatanyang unilateral dan militersitik terhadap persoalan-persoalan politik global, perhatian dan energiyang lebih semestinya ditujukan pada upaya untuk menjawab isuisu etis dan keadilan yang muncul daripolarisasi global dalam kekayaan, pendapatan dan kekuasaan.

This paper surveys the phenomenon of violence in its relation to religion, as exemplified in the two recent incidents of the terrorist attack on WTC and the Gujarat Genocide. Terrorism and communal violence cannot be classified together; however, the denominator of religion operates as a commonality be­ tween them. After analyzing how and why real-world struggles get sacralized, we probe into the two responses to violence, represented by Rene Girard (theological response) and Gandhi (practical application). In spite of the many differences, both seem to agree upon the <em>'only way'</em> to unwind the coil of violence.

The idea that national and international policies are best built on cultural pluralism, or what is often termed multiculturalism, has almost achieved the status of common sense. Such a view is propagated on the recognition that societies around the world, due to complex social, political and ecological processes associated with old and new globalisation and the attendant mass and rapid migration of people, are much more mixed than the selective amnesia that historical nationalist narratives have hitherto acknowledged. Of course this does/has not resulted in the death of nationalisms; one only needs to switch on the TV across the globe, in each and every country we are seeing the reassertion of old as well as the birth of new nationalist movements, many of which have, such as the Golden Dawn party in Greece and the Tea Party movement in the US gained considerable ground following the 2008 Economic melt down. In India in recent years we have seen the rise of Hindutva, in the UK we hav...

Several million Muslims are currently living as a minority in Western societies. This minority status has been rare in the history of Islam. Nevertheless, there have been some interesting incidents regarding this, such as those in the Iberian Peninsula in the past and the Sahel to the present day. Despite all their differences, some overlaps are observed in both cases, such as the frequent occurrence of a certain de facto secularisation, the emergence of a clear ideological eclecticism as a way of accommodating it, albeit always precarious, and finally, the further development of fundamentalist reactions against it. In contrast, the present-day Western world is characterised by having a well-established secular culture. This could allow the majority of Muslim immigrants to develop secular lifestyles over time that are much less precarious than in the past; although the legitimacy of these will require some reworking of their own religious doctrine.

Understanding Islam and the West is not as easy a task as it might seem. If one attempts to study Muslims living in the West, one is faced by millions of people who are divided among different states, come from different ethnic origins, adopt different schools of thought and understanding within their belief system, and incorporate a realm of perspectives, movements, subcultures, and contradicting positions toward the West. Conversely, if one chooses to study the West in Dar al-Zslum, one is bound to face a past full of conflict and confrontations, a present of intellectual hesitation and unbalanced power relationships, and a future of confusing choices and questions on the prospects of democratidon and the gains/losses of increasing globalization. Hence, scholars choose to focus on one aspect. Recent attempts include studying Islam in relation to the West on a purely philosophical level (e.g., Khuri), the compatibility of Islam and democracy, the future of the process of democratization in the Islamic world (e.g., Esposito and Voll), and studying the response of Muslim intellectuals to the questions and concepts of modernity, (e.g., Cooper and Nettler).'

The volume under review is essentially a collection of papers presented at a two-day workshop on the changing division of labor in South Asia held at the University of Wisconsin in 1984 at which the two major themes were the emerging role of women; and the "increasingly violent role of religion."I The latter theme became the subject of this book. Concerning this subject, the editor, Dr. Bjorkman, writes: 'Bjorlanan, Fundamentalism Revivalists and Violence in South Asia, Prehce v. zOp. cit., Preface, v.

This paper would talk about a transition from a pattern of life where there were limited resources, possibilities and aspirations, to one which promises uninterrupted flow of capital and resources in the present context of West Bengal. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) came to power in Bengal in 1978 after the period of Emergency with promises and hopes for the oppressed classes. However with the emergence of neo-liberal form of capitalism, the Left party, just as the Right, could not but respond to the necessity for transformation towards a post-Fordist economy, characterized more by consumption and less by production. In this re-conceptualization of capital, the concern that has to be addressed is that of marginalization and resistance. This essay would discuss how this resistance would emerge from the existential locations that could not be accommodated within the nexus of dominant power structure, resulting in breakdown in communication between state and its multitudes. The...

The 2001 terrorist attacks on USA marked a crucial moment in the debates referring to the provocations of the new millennium, concerning the rapport between civilizations. The characterization of our time as « the age of terror » reflects more than a rapport "barbarism"-"civilization", "culture"-"inculture", "sacred"-"lay", a clash of ethic and religious fundamentalisms. Literally analyses, born from the ashes of the twin towers, were and are confined to look at the rapport between the Occidental and the Oriental world as one between two incompatible cultures. Their meeting, in the postcolonial and deteritorialisation epoch, is seen as one exclusively violent. But literature offers another battle field, one that proves that beyond our crushing world people, no matter what their culture is, are living the same anguishes of the meeting with the Other and feel the same threats of difference. The literary perspective, by sublimating reality, offers a fresh image of the man at the beginning of the new millennium and the enantiomorphic clash between fundamentalisms. The disease of our times, denounced by the 9/11 texts, is malign and is called oversimplification .

This paper looks into the ways in which eminent Bengali writer Nabarun Bhattacharya used reading as a tool of resistance. Examining his novels, short stories, essays and short journal entries, it attempts to highlight how Bhattacharya used his vast and varied reading as a source of his radical political stance. Keywords : Nabarun Bhattacharya; reading; resistance; subversive literature; cultural memory.

Notwithstanding Max Weber's definition of the modern state as "the association that claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of violence, " religious leaders have often refused to yield authority on the question: the state's legal monopoly of violence does not render moral its every use of violence. 1

The study was set to examine the differences between religion and religiosity and to explore how communities can be protected against religious violence. The study also intended to investigate the motives and the effect that religious violence has had throughout history. The study employed the qualitative research method whereby the researcher carried out a meta-analysis synthesis of different research findings to make conclusions and implications that could answer the study questions. Using the literature review they conducted, the researchers carried out data collection. As such, the researcher employed the bottom-up approach to identify the problem and the questions along with the investigation framework of what they decided to explore. The findings of the study revealed that religious backgrounds should be the cornerstone to realize the diff erence between religion and religiosity. Religion is of divine origin whereas religiosity is specifically a humanistic approach and a behav...

Increasingly, many secular people, Christians and Muslims depict a number of conflicts in pour world as religious wars and manifestations of ancestral hatred. Religious intolerance, more particularly associated with Islam and indiscriminately attributed to Muslims, is likely invoked as a determinant in such conflicts. With more or less religious and historical overtones, reference is frequently made to Jihad and Crusade. Expressions of what is said to be an Islamic “threat” continue to capture, with more intensity, the instantaneity of media’s attention. Perceptions of Muslims, and conflicts they are a party to, are marked increasingly by sensationalism, essentialism and culturalism.

This thesis examines how the late work of Jacques Derrida challenges the efficacy of the concept of biopolitics to describe the relationship between life and politics. The central question that occupies this thesis is how life becomes part of the political, how it exits the putative spontaneity of nature and enters the calculation of sovereignty. In order to posit this question, my work is organized according to two horizons. The first horizon centers on the ways in which Derrida configures the relationship between life and politics. The second horizon is that the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center or what is now known as September 11 or 9/11 became an event around which Derrida bends this critique of life in politics. My first chapter looks to Derrida's concept of autoimmunity as a way to articulate the problematic conflation of life and politics by the term "biopolitics." While Derrida does not explicitly state his complication of this term, I argue that "autoimmunity" positions life as an impossibly unstable concept, one that cannot and should not be confined to a single understanding. My second chapter turns to the first volume of Derrida's final seminars The Beast and The Sovereign. This chapter continues many of the themes pursued in the first chapter, but changes the focus from an autoimmune critique of democracy toward a more generalized critique of human life as political and non-human life as apolitical. Ultimately I pursue the idea that Derrida sought to rethink a configuration of the political that apprehends life in excess of politics. Derrida imagines a politics that escapes being pulled into the political and contoured into so many configurations of death and subjugation. v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First, I would like to thank my partner Nandini Thiyagarajan without whose support and companionship I would be simply lost. Second, I would like to thank my supervisor David L. Clark whose insight, encouragement and patience proved vital as I worked to complete this project. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to experience his mentorship and pedagogy firsthand. I would also like to thank my committee members, Dr. Dana Hollander and Dr. Susan Searls Giroux for their tremendous contributions to my thesis.

This paper is based on a recently published book, Educating Against Extremism (Davies, Educating Against Extremism, 2008), which explores the potential role of schools in averting the more negative and violent forms of extremism in a country. It examines the nature of extremism; identity formation and radicalisation; religious belief, faith schools and the myth of equal value; justice, revenge and

The term "fundamentalism", broadly speaking, names today a religio-political perspective found in many if not all major religions in the contemporary world. Most disturbingly, it is associated with variant forms of religious extremism and thus religiously-oriented terrorism, in particular-though by no means exclusively-that of an Islamic ilk. Movements of a fundamentalist type are evident in Islam, certainly, but they may be found also in Christianity, in Hinduism, in Judaism and other religious communities. Contemporary fundamentalism is not the sole province of any one religion. And an upsurge in the totalising claims of fundamentalist ideologues, of whatever religion, together with the utilisation of globalized communication, transportation and related modern technologies, means that the issue of religious fundamentalism itself requires, once again, some careful attention. 2 Although both

For nearly a century the term "fundamentalism" has referred primarily to a set of specific Christian beliefs and an allied ultra-conservative attitude. However, usage of the term has broadened: "fundamentalism", as a term indicating the position of a "closed mind" coupled with a negative-even hostile-stance toward the status quo, has migrated into political discourse and the wider religious realm. Fundamentalism broadly names a religio-political perspective found in most, if not all, major religions. Most disturbingly, it is now associated with variant forms of religious extremism and thus religiously-oriented terrorism. And it is Islamic modalities of terrorism that, rightly or wrongly, have come to take centre-stage in current world affairs. This lecture will argue that the religious fundamentalism with which Islamist extremism is associated follows an identifiable paradigm that has wider applicability. Religious "fundamentalism" denotes, among other things, a paradigm that paves the way from the relative harmlessness of an idiosyncratic and dogmatic belief system, to the harmful reality of religiously driven and fanatically followed pathways to terrorist activity. The lecture will attempt to describe and analyse this paradigm with reference to contemporary concerns.

The study was set to examine the differences between religion and religiosity and to explore how communities can be protected against religious violence. The study also intended to investigate the motives and the effect that religious violence has had throughout history. The study employed the qualitative research method whereby the researcher carried out a meta-analysis synthesis of different research findings to make conclusions and implications that could answer the study questions. Using the literature review they conducted, the researchers carried out data collection. As such, the researcher employed the bottom-up approach to identify the problem and the questions along with the investigation framework of what they decided to explore. The findings of the study revealed that religious backgrounds should be the cornerstone to realize the diff erence between religion and religiosity. Religion is of divine origin whereas religiosity is specifically a humanistic approach and a behav...

This contribution describes the origin and activities of three organizations in the United Kingdom: the British Association for Islamic Studies (BRAIS), the Muslims in Britain Research Network (MBRN) and Muslim Engagement and Development (MEND), discussing them against the backdrop of a dominant government-led securitization agenda. Having each held leading positions in one of these initiatives, the authors analyze the attempts of these organizations to endorse bonds and bridges between stakeholders at universities, community-based organizations and media, in order to combat distorted views on Islam and Muslims in current British society. Constructive work has taken place as they created new interstitial spaces in which stakeholders have conversed and benefitted from each other’s insights. At the same time, these interstices are being constricted in such a way that the new spaces risk being squeezed by the ‘agenda of misrecognition’, a defensive closed fist. Based on their experienc...

Abstract: Paramilitary vigilantism in Northern Ireland has increased dramatically in the wake of the 1994 cease-fires, and is increasingly threatening to destabilise the peace process. Yet despite the long history of vigilantism in Northern Ireland and the unprecedented attention ...