ABSTRACT
Some persons are psychologically more prone to become terrorists than others; it would be a mistake to dismiss terrorists and their deeds as crazy or capricious. Instead, as Bruce Hoffman has noted, a terrorist group's course of action the selection of targets and tactics is shaped by a variety of factors, among them the organization's ideology. Comparing the small Al Qaeda Central group with organizations such as Hezbollah, Hamas, or ISIS in the context of social movement theory, it is obvious that the latter three are far stronger in terms of numbers and on that account get the greatest amount of attention and have the greatest impact on friends and foes as they display their repertoire of violent performances. But there are also exceptions to this rule, namely, when a relatively small terrorist group or cellor even a lone wolf manages to carry out acts of catastrophic terrorism.
