ABSTRACT
In late 2008 some colleagues and I had dinner with a senior official in the Department of Homeland Security. He said, “You know, I often think that terrorism will not be the defining characteristic of my lifetime or that of my children.” I responded by telling him that his views were consistent with David Rapoport’s four waves theory of terrorism, with its prediction that each terrorism wave will peak and decline. However, not wishing to cast a shadow over the evening, I neglected to add that Rapoport harbored reservations about whether the current, religion-driven wave would behave exactly as its predecessors had, and might possess unusual longevity because of the strength of religious communities. In an early iteration of the wave model, he noted that “a striking characteristic of religious communities is how durable some are” (Rapoport 2002: 66). Indeed, such communities count among the most enduring of human associations. It is, then, not unreasonable to suppose that a terrorism wave built on religious loyalties might differ from secular counterparts. Despite its intuitive plausibility, however, the issue of what might be termed “religious exceptionalism” turns out to be difficult to answer. How might we determine whether there is in fact a religious exception that might lead the current terrorism wave to be more drawn out than those before it? Rapoport himself dealt with earlier religious terrorism in his well-known article, “Fear and Trembling” (Rapoport 1984). He examined the Sicarii, an offshoot of the Zealots, active in Roman-occupied Judea; the Assassins, who operated in Persia during the early Middle Ages; and the Thugees, with a long history in Hindu India. Vivid though these cases are, however, they shed little light on the issue of a religious terrorist wave. The Sicarii sought to stimulate a revolt against the Romans, which they in fact brought about in a short time, with catastrophic consequences. The Assassins were sent by the Ismaili sect, which had a territorial base in what is now northern Iran, and operated as long as that base was secure. Once it was conquered, the assassinations ceased. Unlike the others, the Thugees did manage to endure for centuries until the British uprooted them, but they conducted their violence by stealth, recruited largely within families, and enjoyed the protection of some of the princely states, so their longevity is scarcely a test case. More to the point, each instance, although related to a larger religious tradition, seems to have arisen out of a discrete set of circumstances. None was part
of a larger stream of similar terrorist organizations. Hence, although the three cases are relatively well documented, they shed little light on the question of whether the present spike in religious terrorism is likely to last longer than its secular predecessors.
