ABSTRACT
Terrorist violence differs from ordinary crime principally by the presence of an altruistic motive and an ideological justification. In terrorism, ideology is all-important, as an organization’s ideological foundation frames the worldview of its members and thus provides a sense of collective identity. Moreover, ideology is instrumental in identifying the enemy, while also providing the necessary explanation and justification for its targeting. In addition, it is again the ideology of a group which determines its core objectives and the strategy for how and by what means these objectives are to be achieved. And finally, ideology is also a critical component in determining a group’s ambitions, as well as the overall perception of urgency for armed action in order to fulfil these aspirations. At the operational level, then, the group’s core strategy translates into the frequency and intensity of its military operations, in that different ideologies provide different levels of acceptability of mass-casualty and indiscriminate targeting.Consequently, the tactics and targeting preferences of a group are also very much influenced by the given group’s belief system. Overall, the understanding of a group’s ideology is one of the most important aspects of predictive threat-assessment of terrorist violence.
