ABSTRACT
This chapter conceptualizes and assesses: new terrorist attacks, old terrorism, new terrorism, religious terrorism, and Jihadi terrorism. It reviews terrorist attacks in the real world, including active violence, hostage-takings, kidnappings, hijackings, barricades, crises, and any overlapping situations and terms. The chapter concerns illegitimate terrorist violence. The chapter codes terrorism using the operational definition already used for the Global Terrorism Database. The term new terrorism is warranted in at least this literal sense, and some of the relative changes from the old to new periods are profound enough to introduce new terrorist behaviors, such as cyberterrorism. It codes new terrorism by religious motivations, meaning that groups with largely religious objectives or justifications are coded as new terrorist groups, which does not deny that they can have political or other objectives separate to their religious objectives. The chapter also codes secular groups with earthly political goals as old terrorists, irrespective of when they occur.
