A Missing Peace? The Role of Religious Actors in Countering Terrorism
Despite the surge of scholarly interest in terrorism and counter-terrorism in the post-9/11 world, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the role of religious actors (especially faith communities and faith leaders) in combating the threat of terrorism. However, the resurgence of religiosity...
WHIRLING WITH THE DIVINE: EXPLORING THE MYSTICAL WORLD OF SUFISM IN DR. HUSSAIN QADRI’S LITERARY LEGACY
Sufism is the mystical aspect of Islam that explores divine closeness and personal transformation beyond conventional boundaries. This study delves into the mystical aspects of Sufism, focusing on understanding the many layers of Sufi spirituality as shown in the rich literary works of Dr. Hussain Q...
The discourse and study of terrorism in decolonised states: the case of Pakistan
The existing literature in the terrorism field does not address the absence of terrorism scholarship in developing countries. This article focuses on this intellectual gap using the case of Pakistan. It argues that most decolonised states, including Pakistan, are yet to grasp the complexities of tra...
Communication (un)savviness and the failure of terrorism: a case of Pakistani terrorist organizations
The central hypothesis of this article is that there are a large number of terrorist groups which prolifically employ strategic communication (stratcom), while paradoxically, there are others who markedly underutilize it, and therefore, fail to mobilize support for the professed cause. The decisive...
Terrorism Can and Should be Defined. But How?
The debate over what constitutes terrorism spans a wide, diverse and largely a competing body of intellectual strands. In particular, the lack of consensus on the need (or otherwise) for a universally acceptable definition or no definition at all characterizes the discursive dynamics of the definiti...
How do Militant Organizations Respond to Counterterrorism? Introducing the LIVE Typology, with Examples from Proscription in Pakistan
How do militant organizations respond to counterterrorism? A vast literature seeks to understand the effects of counterterrorism, examining outcomes such as levels of violence. However, violence is only one way that militant groups can respond to pressure. We focus on terrorist designation or pro...
A critical analysis of India and Pakistan’s terrorism discourse in the context of geopolitics and imperialism
Why do India and Pakistan always quarrel over terrorism? The prevailing arguments more often implicate intriguing South Asian geopolitics surrounding the unresolved Kashmir dispute or pathological partition of British India in 1947 to explain this puzzle. Surprisingly, why and how the two countr...
A case against ‘Critical Terrorism Studies’
This paper presents a case against the current formulation of ‘Critical Terrorism Studies’ (CTS). We will examine some of the core features of CTS, and in doing so identify what we suggest are mistaken assumptions about the nature and extent of contemporary research on terrorism. Our case agains...
A critical analysis of India and Pakistan’s terrorism discourse in the context of geopolitics and imperialism
Why do India and Pakistan always quarrel over terrorism? The prevailing arguments more often implicate intriguing South Asian geopolitics surrounding the unresolved Kashmir dispute or pathological partition of British India in 1947 to explain this puzzle. Surprisingly, why and how the two countr...
British Muslim youth: radicalisation, terrorism and the construction of the “other”
Academic interest in Muslim youth, Islam, radicalisation and Islamic-inspired terrorism exploded in the aftermath of 9/11, aimed at discovering the connection between Islam and terrorism, radicalisation and terrorism and how to detect and understand those who might become involved in them. Radicali...
Communication (un)savviness and the failure of terrorism: a case of Pakistani terrorist organizations
The central hypothesis of this article is that there are a large number of terrorist groups which prolifically employ strategic communication (stratcom), while paradoxically, there are others who markedly underutilize it, and therefore, fail to mobilize support for the professed cause. The decisive...
Deadliness, organisational change and suicide attacks: understanding the assumptions inherent in the use of the term ‘new terrorism’
This study examines the use of the term ‘new terrorism’ in a sample of the literature on terrorism, to identify whether the term represents a stable concept within the field, is of analytic value to terrorism research or is a phrase that merely identifies an unquantified concept. A content anal...
How do Militant Organizations Respond to Counterterrorism? Introducing the LIVE Typology, with Examples from Proscription in Pakistan
How do militant organizations respond to counterterrorism? A vast literature seeks to understand the effects of counterterrorism, examining outcomes such as levels of violence. However, violence is only one way that militant groups can respond to pressure. We focus on terrorist designation or pro...
International terrorism? Indian popular cinema and the politics of terror
The first decade of the twenty-first century has been marked by the decisive entry into our media landscape of the so-called global war on terror, with countless films and TV series from all over the world addressing the issue of international terrorism. Even Indian popular cinema, which has been ad...
Introduction: gender and the governance of terrorism and violent extremism
Several global governance initiatives launched in recent years have explicitly sought to integrate concern for gender equality and gendered harms into efforts to counter terrorism and violent extremism (CT/CVE). As a result, commitments to gender-sensitivity and gender equality in international ...
Online jihadist magazines and the “religious terrorism” thesis
This article presents findings from an empirical study of 39 issues of five online terrorist magazines in order to problematise the concept of religious terrorism. The presentation of the study’s findings focuses on the magazines’ textual content, examining the types of textual item each magazi...
Terrorism, organised crime and the biopolitics of violence
Despite the lack of consensus on a broadly accepted definition of terrorism, a vast majority of scholars agree that terrorist violence is intrinsically political in contrast to organised crime, which is viewed as mainly profit-driven. This article critically examines this widely accepted distinctio...
“9/11 is alive and well” or how critical terrorism studies has sustained the 9/11 narrative
This article argues that despite engaging in a powerful critique of the construction of the attacks of 11 September 2001 (or “9/11”) as temporal break, critical terrorism scholars have sustained and reproduced this same construction of “9/11”. Through a systematic analysis of the research ar...
Affective discipline – resilience in radicalisation prevention
This article engages with the restoration of broken resilience in Dutch secondary radicalisation prevention programmes. It demonstrates the simultaneity of disciplinary techniques and affective governance in case management captured through the concept of “affective discipline”. Affective di...
Against state terror: lessons on memory, counterterrorism and resistance from the Global South
Critical theory avows that “where there is power there is always resistance”. However, the practical implications and consequences of particular modes of resistance remain, within World Politics, under-theorised. In critical terrorism studies (CTS), this critical imperative to resist has recentl...
American and foreign terrorists: an analysis of divergent portrayals in US newspaper coverage
American news coverage of terrorist activity consistently portrays the attacker as abnormal, but the mechanics of this othering process are entirely dependent on the nationality of the attacker in question. Coverage of domestic terrorism stresses the attacker’s personal instability and contrasts t...
Are terrorists “insane”? A critical analysis of mental health categories in lone terrorists’ trials
Lone terrorists’ trials very often include long discussions on the mental health of suspects. This article offers a critical analysis of the mental health categories that are used in lone terrorists’ trials. By examining how the judicial concept of “insanity” collided with the psychiatric cl...
Atomic obsession: nuclear alarmism from Hiroshima to al-Qaeda Global Salafism: Islam's new religious movement Mass media and modern warfare: reporting the Russian war on terrorism Terror in Chechnya: Russia and the tragedy of civilians in war
Ought we be concerned about or even obsessed by nuclear danger in the post-Cold War world? John Mueller insists that we should calm down. He offers three principal arguments in Atomic obsession for the proposition that nuclear danger is far overhyped in our present environment. First, he contends t...
Authoritarian regimes against terrorism: lessons from China
Throughout history many terrorist organisations have originated in both democratic and authoritarian regimes. In their efforts to eradicate the terrorist threat, democracies and their authoritarian counterparts have employed a vast array of measures. Such measures, however, differ according to regim...
Bad history: a historian’s critique of Rapoport’s “four waves of modern terrorism” model
The late David C. Rapoport’s seminal “Four Waves of Modern Terrorism” model has exerted huge influence over approaches to historical and contemporary terrorism. Structuring the history of terrorism since the 1870s into four successive “waves”, the model purports to explain the origin, ...
Class conflict, state terrorism and the Pakistani military: the Okara Military Farms dispute
In their dispute with their tenants, in what is known as the Okara Military Farms dispute, army landlords in the Punjab province of Pakistan resorted to state terrorism conducted by paramilitary troops, in alliance with other state agencies, in an unsuccessful attempt to break farmer resistance to a...
Counter-terrorism and peace negotiations with Philippine rebel groups
This paper examines two case studies of how the United States-led ‘Global War on Terror’ has impinged on the Philippine government’s peace negotiations with the country’s two major rebel groups: the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the communist-led National Democratic Front (NDF). F...
Counterterrorism in Ethiopia: source of threat or security to the people?
The objective of the counterterrorism policies of Ethiopia as reflected in the anti-terrorist proclamations was to protect the right of people to live in peace, freedom and security at all times from the threat of terrorism. However, in practice, the counterterrorism policies followed the design...
Crossing the limen: terrorist prisoners and the politically liminal process of imprisonment
Being processed through prison, for the politically violent, can be understood to be a liminal occurrence. Drawing upon the experiences of imprisoned Republicans in Northern Ireland, this study contrasts internment and imprisonment and situates these militants within the conditions of liminality –...
Exploring the temporality in/of British counterterrorism law and law making
Narratives of “time” can play a type of stabilising role in official discourses surrounding exceptional security practice. Whether referencing (or silencing) historical moments, forecasting when measures will return to normal, or debating temporal processes of law making, time can play a signifi...
False dawns or new horizons? Further issues and challenges for Critical Terrorism Studies
While welcoming Critical Terrorism Studies (CTS) as an interesting and valuable addition to the discourse on terrorism studies, this article argues that CTS has some serious shortcomings, particularly in those accounts that draw explicitly on a Frankfurt School approach. The article will mainly enga...
Finding the right mix: re-evaluating the road to gender-equality in countering violent extremism programming
The adoption of gender mainstreaming strategies has become an increasingly common expectation within countering terrorism and violent extremism policy and programming. Through comparative case study examination of two iterations of a Strengthening Resilience to Violent Extremism programme, this arti...
Fuelling the fire: Al-Shabaab, counter-terrorism and radicalisation in Kenya
In the last decade, facing an increase in Al-Shabaab’s activities on its soil, Kenya has tightened up its counter-terrorism policy, intensifying security operations in vulnerable areas. However, Kenyan counter-terrorism measures have been criticised for overstepping legal boundaries, often degener...
Intersubjective body mapping for reintegration: assessing an art-based methodology to promote reintegration of foreign terrorist fighters
This research investigates the use of an artistic methodology to explore embodied experiences related to the reintegration of returning Foreign Terrorist Fighters (FTFs). The methodology combines bodily, sensory and cognitive aspects of individual and intersubjective processes – dimensions which h...
Injustice and the New World Order: an anthropological perspective on “terrorism” in India
This article presents biographies of three activists of the Student Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). Following 9/11, the Indian state banned SIMI for fomenting “terrorism”, “sedition” and “destroying Indian nationalism”. Of the three SIMI activists, Qasim Omar had spent 30 months in pri...
Introduction: 10 years of Critical Studies on Terrorism
When the editors of Critical Studies on Terrorism wrote their introduction to the inaugural issue in April 2008, they noted that “terrorism” was a “growth industry” which generated a huge amount of social and political activity, and affected an extensive list of areas of social and cultural ...
Is resilience a favourable concept in terrorism research? The multifaceted discourses of resilience in the academic literature
The concept of resilience is frequently found in academic documents describing the favoured solution for how to address the threat of terrorism. Despite this, few attempts have been made to critically examine what resilience means and whether it is a favourable concept in terrorism research. Since m...
John Locke, the state of nature and terrorism
This paper examines John Locke’s political theory in order to see if it can offer any important insights into how to deal with international terrorism. The paper begins by outlining the central aspects of Locke’s social contract theory and the way that Locke thinks that it is mirrored in interna...
Just counterterrorism
This article proposes the Just Counterterrorism Model for shaping and assessing counterterrorism strategy and tactics that are comprehensive, effective and ethical. After deconflating non-state terrorism from other sources of terror and briefly surveying how terror groups end, the article develops t...
“Listing terrorists”: the impact of proscription on third-party efforts to engage armed groups in peace processes – a practitioner's perspectiv
This article explores the effects of proscription – the act of listing an armed group as a designated terrorist organisation – as an example of how international counterterrorist policy can impact on the possibility for third-party actors to engage with listed armed groups in the context of peac...
Critical terrorism studies and numbers: engagements, openings, and future research
Recent years have witnessed a growing multi-disciplinary engagement with the importance of quantification across social, political, and economic life. In this article, I seek to build on this work by offering the first sustained exposition of the significance of numbers for critical scholarship on (...
Misogynistic terrorism: it has always been here
Anti-semitism, racism, pro-life beliefs, and extreme Christian ideology have long been acknowledged to be a feature in far-right terrorist violence in the United States. However, what has been less acknowledged is the underpinning element of misogyny. This paper aims to reflect on why this is. First...
Critical terrorism studies and the far-right: beyond problems and solutions?
Recent years have witnessed increasing academic, media, and political attention to the threat of far-right terrorism. In this article, I argue that scholarship on this threat has suffered from two limitations, each with antecedents in terrorism research more broadly. First, is an essentialist approa...
Counter-terrorism training “at your kitchen table”: the promotion of “CT citizens” and the securitisation of everyday life in the UK
The growing call for public participation in counter-terrorism in Britain is reflected by the number of recent campaigns directed towards different sectors of the population and, increasingly, towards “ordinary” citizens. However, there has been a lack of research examining how counter-radicalis...
The hegemony of Prevent: turning counterterrorism policing into common sense
The British government’s Prevent Duty puts an obligation on specified public sectors to “keep people from being drawn into terrorism”. The policy has been a point of contention within the public discourse, but interview data shows that there is a grudging consent for Prevent policing amongst t...
Misogynistic terrorism: it has always been here
Anti-semitism, racism, pro-life beliefs, and extreme Christian ideology have long been acknowledged to be a feature in far-right terrorist violence in the United States. However, what has been less acknowledged is the underpinning element of misogyny. This paper aims to reflect on why this is. First...
Looking beyond waves and datasets: “cultures of terrorism” and the future of history in terrorism studies
Frequent observations about the lack of historical work in terrorism studies pose questions about history’s place – and its relevance even – in the field. Why have historians largely failed to engage with terrorism studies? And why have terrorism studies scholars generally failed to engage wit...
Introduction: gender and the governance of terrorism and violent extremism
Several global governance initiatives launched in recent years have explicitly sought to integrate concern for gender equality and gendered harms into efforts to counter terrorism and violent extremism (CT/CVE). As a result, commitments to gender-sensitivity and gender equality in international and ...
Critical terrorism studies and numbers: engagements, openings, and future research
Recent years have witnessed a growing multi-disciplinary engagement with the importance of quantification across social, political, and economic life. In this article, I seek to build on this work by offering the first sustained exposition of the significance of numbers for critical scholarship on (...
Researching race, racialisation, and racism in critical terrorism studies: clarifying conceptual ambiguities
This article seeks to ameliorate the conceptual ambiguities surrounding the concepts of race, racialisation, and racism within Critical Terrorism Studies (CTS), as well as encourage the use of these concepts. Race is a key signifier in counter-terrorism discourse, yet its meaning is often taken for ...
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