ABSTRACT
We have just examined the many ways and reasons through which people can become involved in terrorism. This chapter focuses on what happens when one engages in terrorist acts. There are many ways in which people can express their involvement in terrorism. Many people could be considered “involved” without engaging in any actual acts of violence whatsoever – yet violence is what typically comes to mind when we think about terrorism. In fact, a clear answer to the question of what it means to be involved in terrorism is perhaps one of the most important research questions since 2001. Perhaps especially since terrorism has changed in some fundamental ways in the past two decades, there is no clear distinction between becoming a terrorist and being a terrorist except perhaps to define the latter via prolonged involvement, or engagement in specific terrorist activity as a “red line.” While, on the one hand, involvement in terrorism might be considered abstract and vague, it can also be tangible and identifiable when the individual engages in a specific, clearly understood illegal act, or he or she is apprehended in the process of preparing to commit such an act.
