CIAO DATE: 09/07
The National Interest
Jigsaw Jihadism
Justine A. Rosenthal
Abstract
Lately, all terrorism seems to be about Islam, and it all seems to be the same. A snapshot: turn on CNN to watch a gruesome play-by-play of our War on Terror, scan the best-seller list for the newest book on Osama bin Laden, leaf through the newspaper to see the latest suicide terror attack. By all accounts the specter of jihadism looms large. Yet, some unintended trickery is afoot—imagery making the threat to Western democracy, which is frightening enough, seem like the worst kind of Hollywood doomsday movie.
Even if we suspend belief for a moment and simply cast aside all those terrorist groups that clearly have nothing at all to do with the Islamic religion—the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, the FARC in Colombia and the IRA in Ireland (to name but a few)—we are still left with a slew of seemingly similar groups all motivated by and distorting Islam to suit their own ends. Yet the problem is far more complex and, as we disaggregate the threat, we see that although “Islamic terrorism” prevails in many cases, the goals of these terrorist groups are often strikingly different.
Even if all of these terrorists intone various distortions of the Islamic religion, there are no universal agendas. The goal for groups like Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Chechen rebels is “a nation of their own” with tactics reminiscent of the ethnic violence erupting after abandoned colonialism. Groups with traditional nation-state aims—even if they use Islamic rhetoric—have little interest, if any, in the United States. Their goals remain narrow and less fearsome.