ABSTRACT

YES: The relevance of the ‘new terrorism’ concept

Ersun N. Kurtuluş

This part of the chapter argues that the concept of ‘new terrorism’ is valid and useful to terrorism research. It make a strong case for a number of related statements, namely, that many contemporary terrorist groups have religious and/or mystical goals, that some terrorist groups have networked internal organisation, that some terrorist groups engage in indiscriminate attacks and some groups have the potential to use weapons of mass destruction. The chapter observes an historical trend of liberation movements and violent separatist organisations adopting religious programmes and goals and an increase in the number of religious terrorist organisations in relation to secular ones. It also notes that large-scale terror attacks have become the norm and that there is a change in the ideological justification of types of organisations from a vanguard leadership towards ‘individual terrorism’.

NO: The fallacy of the new terrorism thesis

Isabelle Duyvesteyn and Leena Malkki

This part of the chapter argues against the notion of ‘new terrorism’ by pointing out that network structures and leaderless resistance have existed historically for some time, and that the objectives of religious terrorist organisation are ultimately also political and that apocalyptic or utopian thinking was not foreign to previous, secular organisations either. It also argues that the increase in the number of victims should be seen as a general trend over history to reach the desired effect, rather than something specifically differentiating these two so-called waves of terrorism.