Terrorism
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Terrorism
Jihad is a form of radical Islamic fundamentalism, that often has been used to define and capture the essence of Islamic terrorism. Fredholm (2016) outlines that Jihad is more than just radical fundamental Islamism and that not all acts of violence propagated by an Islamic assailant are tantamount to jihadism or terrorism. Summarily, Jihad is defined as a struggle or effort to build a good Muslim society; it is also defined as a form of struggle to defend Islam from distractors with the application of force if necessary. (Fredholm, 2016). The increased geopolitical cooperation among nations due to increased global trade has resulted in both the colonization, development, and annexation of regions for individual countries’ self-interests. Cultures across the globe have become affected in a major way and in most cases either accepted or struggled against dilution of their belief systems through diplomacy or war. Islamic regions across the world and for the late 20th and 21st century have been at the forefront of the struggle against acculturation by western ideologies that often do not align with Islamic teachings, and Jihad of the kind of “Holy War” has become a major ideology which most fundamentalists have used to justify terrorism. Summarily, Islamic fundamentalism and radicalization can be seen to manifest in most Islamic societies due to a shift of social and religious values to materialistic value systems.
Jihadism in the west is often perceived as a war against unbelievers. It is a form of defensive reaction to acts of provocation of Muslims, and initially only worked to justify Islamic struggles (Fredholm, 2016). But among the Sunni Islamists, Jihadism has become a phenomenon taken over by radicals and extremists who have as a result extended their stances from a defensive jihad to an offensive jihad and as such recruited more people and conducted massive attacks not only in their homeland but abroad against members of their Islamic community as well as outsiders. The 20th century was ushered out by the US Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania by Osama Bin Laden’s al-Qaida, as a form of retaliation to America’s interference in Islamic regions of Africa and the Middle East. While insignificant at the time, it was the first significant attack on western targets that ushered in a period of unprecedented growth in extremist groups in both Africa and the Middle East.
As a form of violence, the attacks by Islamist radicals, under the pretext of jihad targeted civilian entities, as well as, western economic interest with the aim of causing economic and property damages and more importantly, mass casualties. Sensational media reporting of the gruesomeness of the attacks have become the driving force that has sustained their consistent attacks on western targets, as well as in homegrown regions as they instill fear and push people in societies to mass panic, hysteria, and mass migration. The 9/11 attacks shortly after the US embassy bombings, was a critical turning point in the fight against terrorism, as it allowed major shifts in defining and categorizing Islamist radicalization. Like all previous attacks perpetrated by fundamentalists and radicals, the attack targeted soft spots, in a bid to garner mass media hysteria and fear.
Security-wise, the 9/11 attacks saw a shift in policing from community-based partnership to crime-fighting, and increased global surveillance. It compelled for increased recruitment of officers, standardized training on responding to global and local threats, greater use of technology for surveillance and communication, and cooperation between security forces across the globe. Globally, it also resulted in the embodiment of more radical groups, and their growth, which only resulted in increased surveillance, asymmetrical warfare, and the creation of a standardized code of operation. The new role of security systems was centered on crisis management, mitigation mechanism, and swift response to potential threats. With increased destabilization in the Middle East, and a rise in migration to the west and generally the global north, more and more of these attacks shifted to homegrown individuals.
References
Fredholm, M. (2016) “Understanding Lone Actor Terrorism. Past, Today & Future Outlook, and
Response Strategies”. Routledge Publishers. Print
Instructions
The term ” terrorism” was coined during the French Revolution and Jacobean reign of terror. That does not mean that individual and group acts, which we might classify as today’s terrorism cannot be traced back to the earliest activities of humankind. In this chapter we will look at human violence and how it evolved into the label of “terrorism” in the twenty first century.
Assignment: In a two (2) page paper describe what is Jihad and the effect it has on World Security.
The book is: TERRORISM TODAY:PAST,PLAYERS,FUTURE
