“The ‘New Terrorism’ and its Critics” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 34(6)

This article attempts to fulfill a lacuna in the literature on terrorism by providing a systematic response to the widespread criticism of the concept of “new terrorism.” According to this conceptualization, the “new terrorism” is characterized by religious motivation, networked organizational structures, tendency to launch mass casualty attacks and possible use of weapons of mass destruction. This conceptualization is criticized by scholars who argue that religiously motivated terrorism has always existed; that increased frequency of mass casualty attacks is due to other factors; that traditional terrorists were also indiscriminate in their targeting; and that there is nothing new about terrorist attempts to use WMDs or horizontal terrorist networks. These critics are not convincing on three counts: they adopt a rudimentary notion of “new” which is hardly appropriate for detecting or understanding social change; they employ inappropriate categories and labels, which make it impossible to distinguish the characteristic features of new terrorism from those of the old; and several critics create a straw man version of the “new terrorism” argument by resorting to reductionist interpretations. The article points out that the contemporary terrorism is not only religious, but is also characterized by the absence of several ideological and political imperatives for centralized and hierarchical organizational structures and for using discriminate violence that characterized left wing and ethno-nationalist terrorism of the past. The critics also ignore the fact that there is a declared intention on the part of new terrorists to organize horizontally through networks and to kill indiscriminately among civilians.