Islamist Terrorism - History

History

Some scholars, such as Mark Burgess of the Center for Defense Information, trace the roots of Islamic terrorism back to the 11th-century Assassins, an order of Isma'ili Shi'ism that targeted political and religious opponents who stood in the way of the Assassins' sectarian ideology. In positing a continuity between Islamic terrorism's medieval and modern manifestations, Burgess identifies a common underlying motive, namely loyalty to a divine imperative, and similar tactics, such as actively seeking out martyrdom.

The emergence of modern Islamic terrorism has its roots in the 19th century. The Wahhabi movement, an Arabian fundamentalist movement that formed in the 18th century, began to establish a broad following during the 1800s and gradually inspired other fundamentalist movements during the 20th century. Waves of politically motivated terrorist movements in Europe during the 1800s (e.g. the Narodnaya Volya, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation) and early 1900s (e.g. the IRA, the Irgun) served as inspirations and models which would inspire the Islamists over the course of the 20th century and beyond. During the Cold War, the United States and the United Kingdom supported the rise of fundamentalist groups in the Middle East and South Asia as a hedge against Soviet expansion and as a means to weaken anti-Western nationalist movements in some countries.

According to Burgess, the escalation of terrorism during the later 20th century has its roots in three pivotal events circa 1979: the Iranian Revolution, the post-Cold War global religious revival, and the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. These events, Burgess goes on to argue, were factors that fueled a recourse to religious terrorism. American historian Walter Laqueur described the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan as the "global trigger" of Islamic terrorism.