Macro–Terrorism, "Holy War", and Religious Violence: Current Challenges to Conceptualisation and Typology of Terrorism

Abstract

For a number of reasons, research in terrorist violence constitutes a specific field of study. Terrorism is a politically sensitive topic marked by intense methodological disputes, as well as by problematic sources of information. Equally complex is the assessment of the dynamism of the development of terrorist phenomena and the subsequent dynamism of their study. This dynamism is from time to time influenced by certain events which play the role of milestones drawing a dividing line between the period "before" and "after". This also seems to be the case of the unprecedented terrorist attack on the USA on 11 September 2001, unprecedented in terms of the number of direct casualties, direct and indirect economic damages and – last but not least – in terms of the psychological impact it has had, not speaking about the extraordinary mass media coverage it has been given. No wonder that terms like "religious macro–terrorism," "superterrorism," "a new era of terrorism" etc., have recorded an unparalleled boom in the above context, regardless of their contents being or not always quite clear even to their most frequent users. ; For a number of reasons, research in terrorist violence constitutes a specific field of study. Terrorism is a politically sensitive topic marked by intense methodological disputes, as well as by problematic sources of information. Equally complex is the assessment of the dynamism of the development of terrorist phenomena and the subsequent dynamism of their study. This dynamism is from time to time influenced by certain events which play the role of milestones drawing a dividing line between the period "before" and "after". This also seems to be the case of the unprecedented terrorist attack on the USA on 11 September 2001, unprecedented in terms of the number of direct casualties, direct and indirect economic damages and – last but not least – in terms of the psychological impact it has had, not speaking about the extraordinary mass media coverage it has been given. No wonder that terms like ...