ABSTRACT
Waves of international terrorism Advancements in sciences come through painstaking observations. Scientists’ astute observations of the seemingly chaotic world pave the way for what is known as “knowledge creep,” where the boundary of our accumulated knowledge increases by recognizing patterns that were previously indistinguishable. Terrorism research is certainly no exception to this rule. One of David Rapoport’s most significant contributions to our advancement of knowledge has been his finding of the four waves of international terrorism. Rapoport defines waves with three characteristics: (1) a cycle of activities characterized by expansion and contraction phases, (2) covering multiple nations, and (3) “driven by a common predominant energy that shapes the participating groups’ characteristics and mutual relationships” (2006: 10). By studying the history of terrorism since the 1880s, Professor Rapoport identifies four distinct waves fueled by the common ideological fervor emanating from anarchism, anti-colonialism, socialism, and religious fundamentalism, with the first three waves each lasting for around 40 years. Although the wave theory has gained a firm footing in the extant literature (Sageman 2008a) on terrorism, to my knowledge, not much effort has gone into the examination of the causes of terrorism and the process by which mega-trends of politically motivated violence saturate nearly every corner of the earth. In contrast, however, research on diffusion ideas and their acceptance by the target population has a rich history going back to mid-twentieth century (Rogers 1962; Brown 1981). Recently, a number of scholars and journalists have made important contributions to the understanding of the process by which ideas spread, and, in the the nascent field of terrorism studies, the literature on “radicalization” has simply exploded in volume. By culling research in disparate fields of inquiry this chapter hopes to contribute to the understanding of this process of diffusion of ideas across the globe. I argue that this spread is analogous to the spread of infectious diseases (Youde 2007; Price-Smith 2009), where the path of infection is neither uniform nor random, but follows a specific logic. As examples, I examine the experience of al-Qaeda and Islamic radicalism. Due to space and time constraints, I will touch upon only the salient points and paint an impres-
sionistic picture rather than a detailed analysis. However, before we delve into the question of how, let me address the question, why do people follow these mega-trends of ideas?
