Muslim Terrorism: Causes and Consequences
Terrorism in the most general sense is an act of violence intended to create fear and terror in people and society for differing ends. It has featured in human history for millennia and continues to be perpetrated by people of varying social, economic, cultural, political, and ideological backgrounds. In this sense, terrorism is not unique to a particular people or culture.
However, especially in the last ten years, the majority of acts of terrorism have been committed by Muslims and as a corollary it has been presented as a Muslim phenomenon. This has been the case largely due to the role media has played, but also the role played by intellectuals and academics through their erroneous articulation of terrorism and in linking terrorism to Muslims and to their faith. Today, therefore, in the popular discourse and to some extent in the intellectual exchange, Muslims are stereotypically conceptualised as terrorists and Islam as the abode of terrorism.
This paper will explore terrorism as a sociological phenomenon and look at some of the pivotal causes and consequences of it using social categorisation theory as a framework of analysis. Social categorisation theory demonstrates causal relationships between the processes of group identification and the types of conflict situations and, as such, allows us to redefine the contours of terrorism by removing it from its surrogate abode in Islam to its rightful domicile in the crisis situation of Muslim everyday living. The argument will be made that Muslim terrorism in fact is a misnomer and what we are dealing with today is a habitus induced by the crisis situations that afflict many Muslims today. The true description of this habitus is political terrorism whose roots are deeply embedded in the crisis situations of modernity.
Dr Jan Ali is a Sociologist of Religion (Islam). He lectures in Islamic Studies in the School of Humanities and Languages and simultaneously holds a title as the Community and Research Analyst in the Centre for the Study of Contemporary Muslim Societies at the University of Western Sydney. His main sociological focus is on the study of existential Islam. In recent years Jan has been invited by a number of organizations in Sydney to deliver Public Lectures and late last year he was invited by the New South Wales Police to deliver a Public Guest Lecture entitled Improving Relations Between Muslim and non-Muslim Australians Using Community Level Initiatives. Jan has published a number of journal articles on different aspects of Islam and has just completed a book tentatively entitled Islamic Revivalism Facing the Modern World: A Study of the Tablīgh Jamā‘at which will be published later in the year by New Dawn Press.