NCJ Number
172024
Journal
IALEIA Journal Volume: 8 Issue: 2 Dated: (February 1994) Pages: 11-40
Date Published
1994
Length
30 pages
Annotation
This paper discusses the rationale, theology, and motivation of religious fanatics and fundamentalists who engage in terrorist violence.
Abstract
Islamic and Christian Fundamentalists are historically partners of sorts. Both subscribe to views that their "truths," based in the Bible or the Koran, are for that reason universal, permanent, and beyond debate. Both see the world, its problems, and solutions in dualistic, Manichean terms; forces of good and righteousness are confronted by the forces of evil; one is either with the movement uncompromisingly or incontrovertibly against it. Both view their religious and secular lives as intertwined. Within the right-wing extremist organizations in the United States, some of whom have links with Neo-Nazi groups in Germany and Western Europe, the basic ideological belief systems are bridged by the Christian Identity Movement; it significantly influences white supremacists and anarchistic survivalist groups. Probing the psychology of the religious fanatic prone to violence shows a pervasive sense of alienation and despair that arises from a complex network of social conditions, some of which are fortuitous. The religious concepts and motivations then become the tools and the rationale for a person prone to violence due to factors irrespective of those beliefs. This paper also compares the religiously oriented terrorists to secular terrorists. 5 figures and a 42-item bibliography