Encyclopedia of Islam

Further reading: Raymond Lifchez, ed., The Dervish 

Lodge: Architecture, Art, and Sufism in Ottoman Turkey

(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California 

Press, 1992); Annemarie Schimmel, Mystical Dimen-

sions of Islam (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina 

K  666  

taxation

---

Press, 1975); J. Spencer Trimingham, The Sufi Orders in 

Islam (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971).

terrorism

Terrorism is today used to describe many different 

kinds of violence. As a result, the meaning of the 

word terrorism is highly contested. Most individual 

states, and much of the international community 

in the form of international organizations and law, 

define terrorism as the use of illegal force by non-

state actors. This definition focuses attention on 

the violence of nonstate actors—often understood 

by those who carry out such violence as resistance 

to a particular 

aUthority

 or past violent activity 

perpetrated by that authority—at the expense of 

attention to violence perpetrated by the state.

Rather than focusing on the causes that lead 

to violent resistance, discussions of terrorism are 

often limited to questions about the legitimate use 

of force. However, a more general definition of the 

term emerges from understanding the dynamics of 

the conflicts thought to include terrorism or violent 

resistance: the use of violence against nonmilitary 

targets in order to create an environment of fear and 

intimidation for the purposes of achieving a desired 

end. This definition avoids a judgment of validity of 

one kind of violence over another, state and non-

state, legitimate and illegitimate, for example, and 

focuses instead on the use of a particular kind of 

violence and means of achieving a desired end.

Since the 1970s, in Western media and public 

imagination terrorism has become increasingly 

synonymous with i

slam

. From the 1972 killing of 

Israeli Olympic athletes at the hands of Palestin-

ian gunmen in Munich, Germany, to the events of 

September 11, 2001, images creating the impres-

sion of an essential link between violence and 

Islam have been ubiquitous. This is not to say that 

the word terrorism has not been used to describe 

violence in other parts of the world throughout 

this time, such as in Northern Ireland, South 

Africa, and the Oklahoma City bombing in the 

United States (to name just a few cases). None-

theless, terrorism and Islam, in the eyes of some 

western European and North American commen-

tators, are inextricably linked; the overemphasis of 

the concept of 

Jihad

 as “holy war” in interpreting 

Islam, among both Muslims and non-Muslims, 

also contributes to this image. It is essential to 

note, however, that the Arabic term for terrorism, 

irhab, is a recent addition to the Arabic language. 

It does not appear in the q

Uran

 nor is it found in 

any 

hadith

. The relationship between terrorism 

and Islam, then, must be understood in the con-

texts in which violence is termed terrorism.

The kind of violence generally called terrorism 

is not particular to any religious tradition or polit-

ical system. In the previous two decades, violence 

against nonstate actors has been perpetrated by 

Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and Hindus 

as well as by nonbelievers and adherents of local 

religious traditions, all living in varied political 

systems. At the same time, members of all reli-

gious traditions and citizens in states with differ-

ent political systems have denounced violence of 

this nature as inimical with the tradition or system 

in question. When thinking about terrorism, then, 

it is more useful to focus on the fact of violence 

and the kinds of violence at work as well as the 

dynamics in which the violence is found than it is 

on whether or not such force is legitimate accord-

ing to a given tradition.

See also  a

rab

-i

sraeli

 

conFlict

;  g

UlF

 W

ars

; 

h

amas

; h

izbUllah

; 

al

-q

aida

; 

sUicide

.

Caleb Elfenbein