Two decades ago, Christopher Hitchens denounced the use of the label “terrorist” as a Medusa's head, which unveiled would “turn all discussion into stone…. Whisk, whisk … and there goes history, there goes inquiry, there goes proportion” (“Wanton Acts of Usage,” Harper's, September 1986, p. 68). Perhaps most social concepts, embedded as they are in wider communities of shared meaning beyond the arena of scholarly discourse, prove susceptible to rhetorical corruption as they become weapons of political denigration. The degradation of the concept of terrorism, however, seems especially severe. Add religious fundamentalism into the discourse, and our expectations sink even further.
How refreshing, then, to encounter two works that do not further flatten our view of the world, but add three, even four, dimensions to our understanding of the problems of terrorism and fundamentalism. Leonard Weinberg and Ami Pedahzur have teamed to produce an authored monograph, Political Parties and Terrorist Groups and an edited collection, Religious Fundamentalism and Political Extremism. The former represents the more significant contribution not only to the study of terrorism but also to the literature on comparative political parties. The latter book suffers from the usual weaknesses of edited volumes—varying quality and some lack of coherence.
The basic assumption informing Political Parties and Terrorist Groups is that the former are political organizations and terrorism is a type of activity. Consequently, political parties can pick up or put down terrorist tactics as circumstances warrant (p. 26). This insight may strike one as obvious, but it is the obvious that often eludes us.
If we consider terrorism as a tactic that emerges under certain circumstances and conditions that can change over time, we then add back into our discourse precisely those elements Hitchens fears we lose: history, inquiry, and proportion. Weinberg and Pedahzur lay out some possible conditions that promote the entry and exit of political groups from terrorist activities. They also examine how emerging social movements can give rise to both political parties and terrorist groups. Finally, they examine how pathways from terrorism to peaceful party competition might be reinforced or reversed.
They proceed to investigate these patterns and possibilities through the analysis of cross-national data and historical case studies. This combination of methodologies exploits the strength of each. The former provides an overview of trends, while the latter gives a sense of the particular context of specific transformations. Of particular interest here are their examination of the yet-to-be-completed transition of radical groups like Fatah, Hamas, and Hizballah toward normal politics, as well as the nearly completed transition of the Irish Republican Army.
Their analysis of data on 400 terrorist groups identifies 124 that had some established ties to political parties at some point in their history. Of this number, the most common patterns were for the party to create a terrorist group (71) or a party faction to break away and create a terrorist group (28). Other, less frequent, patterns include when the party supports a terrorist group (8) or a terrorist group creates a party (7). They also classify the ideological associations of the parties/terrorist factions, the most prominent of which were left wing (50) or nationalist/separatist (36). Only 12 of their cases were characterized as religious in orientation.
This last point underlines two limitations of their analysis, both essentially acknowledged by the authors. First, if 124 terrorist groups have some type of party affiliation, then over twice those numbers do not. Second, their focus on the twentieth century means that they capture the wave of nationalist and left-wing terrorism, but perhaps underrepresent the emergence of religiously inspired terrorism. Both limitations mean that their analysis does not address the transnational, religiously driven, terrorist franchises currently dominating our consciousness. In addition, the concentration in both their data analysis and case studies on dissident groups means that patterns of regime terrorism essentially go unmentioned. This terrorism, too, often exhibits party connections, as in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.
Despite these limitations, their investigation of political parties and terrorism underlines some lessons that carry over to our understanding of other groups that resort to terrorism in pursuit of their political objectives. First, by making explicit the ties between normal politics and terrorist activities, they remind us that terrorism cannot be understood without placing it in its context. We had better understand the dynamics of its origins, the complexity of its organization, and the bases of its appeal if we hope to devise an adequate response.
Moreover, their discussion of the emergence of discontent, the development of social movements, the organization of political parties, and the transformation of their strategies and tactics over time all serve to emphasize another obvious, though neglected, insight. Things change: “Neither terrorist groups nor terrorist campaigns need go on forever” (p. 105). This basic observation is relevant to all forms of terrorist phenomena. These groups can be defeated, they can burn out, they can alienate the base they purport to represent, and they can be encouraged to make a “strategic shift.”
The appropriate mix of strategies to follow depends on the nature of the group confronted and the dynamics over time. War-war, as Churchill observed, deserves no automatic preference over jaw-jaw. The otiose maxim “Never negotiate with terrorists” is mainly honored in the breach by any government confronting a strongly embedded dissident group that includes terrorism in its tactical repertory. As Weinberg and Pedahzur observe, if peace is going to be achieved, negotiations have to include the parties making war (p. 112).
It takes two to talk, and that is where the new wave of transnational terrorism, fueled by a commitment to an extreme version of Islamic fundamentalism, poses a challenge. Weinberg and Pedahzur's edited volume, Religious Fundamentalism and Political Extremism, makes a further contribution to the understanding of contemporary forms of political extremism and violence. The seven essays collectively reflect some of the same strengths of conceptual sophistication and historical understanding. The contributions, however, are not of equal quality, and their disparate character leads to an overall disjointedness. Such shortcomings, of course, commonly afflict such collections.
The disjointedness perhaps was inevitable, as so few authors are writing on such a broad theme. The collection's focus is not simply on religious fundamentalism and terrorism or even violence in general, but the even broader category of political extremism. Moreover, the authors disagree on the character of fundamentalism. The articles define different problems and approach them in significantly different ways. I suspect, though, that readers with sufficiently catholic taste will find something of value in each essay.
Perhaps the greatest contrast exists between Arie Perliger and Leonard Weinberg's historical essay “Jewish Self-Defence Groups prior to the Establishment of the State of Israel” and “Counting the Causes and Dynamics of Ethnoreligious Violence” by Jonathan Fox. The former essay investigates “Jews not as victims but as perpetrators of terrorism” (p. 91). Most readers probably know about the involvement of individuals like Menachem Begin in the occasionally terrorist resistance to the British Mandate in Palestine. Fewer probably may be aware of the mine planted in an Arab market in Haifa by the extremist group Etzel in July of 1938 that killed more than 70 Arabs. Further back, Jewish Zealots used terrorism “to provoke Roman repression and Jewish rebellion” in the first century c.e. (p. 92). It worked; unfortunately, the rebellion was crushed and the Second Temple was destroyed, beginning the 1,900-year second Jewish Diaspora. History matters, especially in the Middle East where, it seems, nothing is forgotten.
The essay by Fox stands in radical methodological contrast to this preindependence history of Jewish radicalism. Drawing on the Minorities at Risk database, he progressively constructs a model of the dynamics of ethnoreligious conflict that ultimately combines 18 elements related by 28 arrows of influence. While this might strike some as a bit baroque, the conclusions he draws are straightforward: “The main cause of ethnic rebellion is not religion. Rather it is the desire for self-determination” (p. 137). Religion, though, can intensify a rebellion.
Three of the essays stress the tensions between religion and secular ideals. Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi argues, “Religion, any religion, is the enemy of liberal democracy as long as it has not been defanged and privatized” (p. 33). Daphna Canetti-Nisim basically concurs that both Orthodox and alternative religious belief systems attract authoritarian personalities. Finally, Gabriel Ben-Dor and Ami Pedahzur go further and argue that the activist and totalistic character of Islam makes its adherents more susceptible to the temptations of terrorism. In contrast, Michael Barkun's essay casts doubt on the utility of both the category of “fundamentalism” and overly simplistic arguments that connect religious belief with violence. Finally, Roger Eatwell reviews the religious character of fascism, concluding that despite certain affective parallels, fascism's appeal rested more on its pseudoscientific and rational claims than on pseudoreligious ones.
Readers accepting poet William Carlos Williams's assertion that “Dissonance/ (if you are interested)/ leads to discovery” will find this collection of interest. Those looking for a sophisticated and systematic examination of the relation between fundamentalism and extremism like that on political parties and terrorism will need to look elsewhere.
