Islamic terrorism is a form of religious terrorism carried out by fundamentalist militant Islamists and Islamic extremists with the aim of achieving various political or religious objectives, such as jihad and caliphate.
Since at least the 1990s, Islamist terrorist incidents have occurred around the world and targeted both Muslims and non-Muslims. Most attacks have been concentrated in Muslim-majority countries, with studies finding 80–90% of terrorist victims to be Muslim.
The annual number of fatalities from terrorist attacks grew sharply from 2011 to 2014, when it reached a peak of 33,438, before declining to 13,826 in 2019. From 1979 to April 2024, five Islamic extremist groups—the Taliban, Islamic State, Boko Haram, al-Shabaab, and al-Qaeda—were responsible for more than 80% of all victims of Islamist terrorist attacks. In some of the worst-affected Muslim-majority regions, these terrorists have been met by armed, independent resistance groups. Islamist terrorism has also been roundly condemned by prominent Islamic figures and groups.
Justifications given for attacks on civilians by Islamic extremist groups come from their interpretations of the Quran, the belief that many self-proclaimed Muslims have violated Islamic law and are disbelievers (takfir); the perceived necessity of restoring Islam by establishing Sharia as the source of law, including by reestablishing the Caliphate as a pan-Islamic state (e.g., ISIS); the glory and heavenly rewards of martyrdom (istishhad); and the belief in the supremacy of Islam over all other religions. Justification of violence without permitted declarations of takfir (excommunication) has been criticized.
The use of the phrase "Islamic terrorism" is disputed. In Western political speech, it has variously been called "counter-productive", "highly politicized, intellectually contestable" and "damaging to community relations", by those who disapprove of the characterization 'Islamic'. It has been argued that "Islamic terrorism" is a misnomer for what should be called "Islamist terrorism".
Terminology
George W. Bush and Tony Blair (US president and UK Prime Minister respectively at the time of the September 11 attacks) repeatedly stated that the war against terrorism has nothing to do with Islam. Others inside and out of the Islamic world who oppose its use on the grounds there is no connection between Islam and terrorism include Imran Khan, the prime minister of Pakistan, and academic Bruce Lawrence.
Former US president Barack Obama explained why he used the term "terrorism" rather than "Islamic terrorism" in a 2016 town hall meeting saying, "There is no doubt, ... terrorist organizations like Al-Qaeda or ISIL – They have perverted and distorted and tried to claim the mantle of Islam for an excuse for basically barbarism and death ... But what I have been careful about when I describe these issues is to make sure that we do not lump these murderers into the billion Muslims that exist around the world ..."
It has been argued that "Islamic terrorism" is a misnomer for what should be called "Islamist terrorism".
In January 2008, the US Department of Homeland Security Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties issued a report titled Terminology to Define the Terrorists: Recommendations from American Muslims, which opened with
The office "consulted with some of the leading U.S.-based scholars and commentators on Islam to discuss the best terminology to use when describing the terrorist threat." Among the experts they consulted,
History
Growth in Islamist attacks and killings around the world
A 2024 study by the Fondation pour l’innovation politique recorded 66,872 Islamist terrorist attacks worldwide between 1979 and April 2024, causing at least 249,941 deaths. The study found that attacks increased sharply after 2013, with 56,413 attacks recorded between 2013 and April 2024, representing 84.4% of the total recorded since 1979. It also found that 96.7% of attacks occurred in the Middle East and North Africa, South Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Pre-20th century
Whether Islamic terrorism is a recent phenomenon is disputed. Some maintain that there was no terrorism in Islam prior to late 20th and early 21st century, while others, such as Ibn Warraq, claim that from the beginning of Islam, "violent movements have arisen" such as the Kharijites, Sahl ibn Salama, Barbahari, Kadizadeli movement, Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, etc., "seeking to revive true Islam, which its members felt had been neglected in Muslim societies, who were not living up to the ideals of the earliest Muslims". The 7th century Kharijites, according to some, started from an essentially political position but developed extreme doctrines that set them apart from both mainstream Sunni and Shi'a Muslims. The group was particularly noted for adopting a radical approach to takfir, whereby they declared Muslim opponents to be unbelievers and therefore worthy of death, and also by their strong resemblance to contemporary ISIL.
1960s–1970s
During the era of the anti-colonial struggle in North Africa and the Middle East, coinciding with the creation of Israel in 1948, a series of Marxist-Leninist and anti-imperialist movements swept throughout the Arab and Islamic world. These movements were nationalist and revolutionary, but not Islamic. However, their view that terrorism could be effective in reaching their political goals generated the first phase of modern international terrorism. In the late 1960s, Palestinian secular movements such as Al Fatah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) began to target civilians outside the immediate arena of conflict. Following Israel's victory over Arab forces in 1967, Palestinian leaders began to realize that the Arab world was unable to defeat Israel in the battlefield. At the same time, lessons drawn from the Jewish struggle against the British in Palestine and revolutionary movements across Latin America, North Africa and Southeast Asia, motivated the Palestinians to turn away from guerrilla warfare towards urban terrorism. These movements were secular in nature, though their international reach served to spread terrorist tactics worldwide.
The book The Revolt by Menachem Begin, leader of the Irgun militia and future Israeli Prime Minister, influenced both Carlos Marighella's urban guerrilla theory and Osama bin Laden's Islamist al-Qaeda organization. Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman in the book Rise and Kill First asserted that Hezbollah's 1983 campaign of coordinated terrorist attacks against American, French and Israeli military installations in Beirut drew inspiration from and directly mirrored the Haganah's and Irgun's 1946 bombing campaign against the British: both succeeded in creating an atmosphere of widespread fear which eventually forced the enemy to withdraw. Bergman further asserts that the influence of Israeli-sponsored terrorist operations on the emerging Islamists was also of operational nature: the Israeli proxy Front for the Liberation of Lebanon from Foreigners had carried out multiple deadly truck bombings in Lebanon long before the emergence of Hezbollah. An Israeli Mossad agent told Bergman: "I saw from a distance one of the cars blowing up and demolishing an entire street. We were teaching the Lebanese how effective a car bomb could be. Everything that we saw later with Hezbollah sprang from what they saw had happened after these operations."
The year 1979 is widely considered a turning point in the rise of religiously motivated radicalism in the Muslim world. Several events are thought to be crucial for the proliferation of Islamist terrorism in the next decade, such as the Soviet–Afghan War and unprecedented support from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the US for anti-Soviet jihadists; the Iranian Revolution and subsequent Iran–Iraq War as well as Khomeini's active support for Shia groups fighting the Israeli occupation of Lebanon; the Grand Mosque seizure in Mecca and subsequent Wahhabization of the Saudi government; and the Egypt–Israel peace treaty that was highly unpopular in some sections of the Muslim world.
According to Bruce Hoffman of the RAND Corporation, in 1980, 2 out of 64 terrorist groups were categorized as having religious motivation while in 1995, almost half (26 out of 56) were religiously motivated with the majority having Islam as their guiding force.
2000s–2010s
According to research by the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag, between 11 September 2001 and 21 April 2019, there were 31,221 Islamist terrorism attacks, in which at least 146,811 people were killed. Many of the victims were Muslims, including most of the victims who were killed in attacks involving 12 or more deaths.
2010s
According to the Global Terrorism Index, deaths from terrorism peaked in 2014 and have fallen each year since then until 2019 (the last year the study had numbers for), making a decline of more than half (59% or 13,826 deaths) from their peak. The five countries "hardest hit" by terrorism continue to be Muslim countries—Afghanistan, Iraq, Nigeria, Syria and Somalia.
In 2016, four out of the five most violent groups in the world were Islamist extremists. These groups carried out 88% of the 2,916 attacks and caused 99% of the 14,017 deaths by the top five groups.
Attacker profiles and motivations
The motivation of Islamic terrorists has been disputed. Some (such as Maajid Nawaz, Graeme Wood, and Ibn Warraq) attribute it to extremist interpretations of Islam; and still others (such as James L. Payne and Michael Scheuer) to a struggle against "U.S./Western/Jewish aggression, oppression, and exploitation of Muslim lands and peoples".
Religious motivation
Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon, in their book, The Age of Sacred Terror, argue that Islamic terrorist attacks are motivated by religious fervor. They are seen as "a sacrament ... intended to restore to the universe a moral order that had been corrupted by the enemies of Islam." Their attacks are neither political nor strategic but an "act of redemption" meant to "humiliate and slaughter those who defied the hegemony of God".
According to Indonesian Islamic leader Yahya Cholil Staquf in a 2017 Time interview, within the classical Islamic tradition, the relationship between Muslims and non-Muslims is assumed to be one of segregation and enmity. In his view, extremism and terrorism are linked with "the basic assumptions of Islamic orthodoxy" and that radical Islamic movements are nothing new. He also added that Western politicians should stop pretending that extremism is not linked to Islam.
According to journalist Graeme Wood "much of what" one major Islamic terror group -- ISIS -- "does looks nonsensical except in light of a sincere, carefully considered commitment to returning civilization to a seventh-century legal environment" of Muhammad and his companions, "and ultimately to bringing about the apocalypse" and Judgement day. ISIS group members insist "they will not—cannot—waver from governing precepts that were embedded in Islam by the Prophet Muhammad and his earliest followers".
Shmuel Bar argues that while the importance of political and socioeconomic factors in Islamist terrorism is not in doubt, "In order to comprehend the motivation for these acts and to draw up an effective strategy for a war against terrorism, it is necessary to understand the religious-ideological factors — which are deeply embedded in Islam."
Examining Europe, two studies of the background of Muslim terrorists—one from the UK and one from France—found little connection between terrorist acts performed in the name of Islam and the religious piety of the operatives. A "restricted" 2008 UK report of hundreds of case studies by the domestic counter-intelligence agency MI5 found that there was no "typical profile" of a terrorist and that
However, while the motivations of the individuals directly involved in carrying out the terror attacks are not necessarily religious and may stem from other reasons, religiously motivated organizations and governments are very often behind such attacks. Fundamentalist organizations and governments often encourage, fund, assist, incentivize, or reward the actions of individuals they recognize as susceptible to being coerced into committing terror attacks, thus using people who are not always religiously motivated to achieve religious ends. Hamas, for example, is known for paying the families of imprisoned terrorists and of suicide bombers. The Islamic Republic of Iran intends billions of US dollars annually for militia fighters and terrorists, exploiting the extreme economic difficulties faced by people in countries such as Yemen, Lebanon and Syria by offering them cash in exchange for terror activity.
A 2015 "general portrait" of "the conditions and circumstances" under which people living in France become "Islamic radicals" (terrorists or would-be terrorists) by Olivier Roy (see above) found radicalisation was not an "uprising of a Muslim community that is victim to poverty and racism: only young people join, including converts".
Roy believes terrorism/radicalism is "expressed in religious terms" because
- most of the radicals have a Muslim background, which makes them open to a process of re-Islamisation ("almost none of them having been pious before entering the process of radicalisation"), and
Denominations/Ideologies
Most strains of thought/schools/sects/movements/denominations/traditions of Islam do not support or otherwise associate themselves with terrorism.