Introduction

This book is an attempt to formulate a Critical theory of counterterrorism that has the tools to produce better understandings of why some people perpetrate acts of terrorism, and how efforts to counter and prevent it should be constructed so as to not impose more violence on innocent people, and thereby create more terrorism and violence. It should therefore be noted that the focus is not on countering terrorism understood in a narrow sense, but that this theory of counterterrorism takes into consideration the dialectic relationship between terrorist violence and counterterrorist violence. The primary aim of the book is to reduce and prevent both kinds of violence.