Social Attitudes Fuelling Islamist Terrorism

Abstract

Our article contributes to the evolving international debate about global Islamist terrorism. According to our data, in the last four decades between 1979 and 2019 more than 160.000 people lost their lives in acts of Islamist terrorism across the globe. Islamist terrorism reached its peak in 2016, and in the period between 1979 and 2019, there were 2,3 terrorist attacks per day, with a daily fatality rate of 11,4 people. The Islamist terrorist organizations (in descending order) Islamic State and affiliates incl. Khorasan, Sinai, and Tripoli; Taliban; Boko Haram; Al-Qaida and affiliates; and Al-Shabaab killed more than 10.000 persons each, and there were more than 1.000 victims from the following nationalities: Iraq, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Syria, Pakistan, Somalia, Algeria, Yemen, United States, India, Egypt, Niger, Cameroon, Philippines, Libya, Israel, Russia, and Kenya. Islamist terrorism, apart from the national and international security establishments of the affected countries, mainly attacked private citizens and property, businesses, religious figures/institutions, transportation, educational institutions, airports and aircraft, utilities, journalists and media, tourists, maritime facilities, NGOs, and food or water supplies. The latest freely available PEW global surveys data suggest that average population-weighted terror support rates (Pew Research Global Attitudes Project Spring 2013) on Muslim favourability of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Taliban, al Qaeda, and suicide bombing is 17.38% of all Muslims around the globe. Our data are based on representative samples of the Muslim populations in 23 countries, comprising at least 56.6% of the global Muslim population, now estimated to be 1.9 billion people. Without considering the age structure, we can start from the assumption that Islamist radicalism is based in a milieu of 330 million people. What explains such attitudes of supporting such murderous acts by millions and millions of ordinary Muslim citizens of our globe? Based on a multivariate analysis of the fairly inclusive and extensive PEW 2012-Pew-Religion-Worlds-Muslims dataset we arrive at the conclusion that restrictive gender norms are the decisive factor leading to the support of terrorist activities.