Question

List and describe the three motivational categories of terrorism. Provide examples of each motivational category

Answer 1

• One’s motivation for engaging in terrorism is often presumed to be the “cause” or ideology of the group.
• The popular image of the terrorist as an individual motivated exclusively by deep and intransigent political commitment obscures a more complex reality.” That reality is that motives to join a terrorist organization and to engage in terrorism vary considerably across different types of groups, and also within groups and they may change over time.
• There are at least four categories of motivation among terrorists: (1) the opportunity for action, (2) the need to belong, (3) the desire for social status, and (4) the acquisition of material reward.
• The main 3 categories that emerge are,injustice,identity and belongingness.
• 1.Injustice-Perceived injustice has long been recognized a central factor in understanding violence generally and terrorism specifically.A desire for revenge or vengeance is a common response to redress or remediate a wrong of injustice inflicted on another.
• It is not difficult to imagine that “one of the strongest motivations behind terrorism is vengeance, particularly the desire to avenge not oneself but others.
• Vengeance can be specific or diffuse, but it is an obsessive drive that is a powerful motive for violence toward others, especially people thought to be responsible for injustices.
• 2.Identity-An individual’s search for identity may draw him or her to extremist or terrorist organizations in a variety of ways. One may fall into “identity foreclosure” where a role and set of ideas and values (an identity) are adopted without personal, critical examination.
• Membership in a terrorist group provides a sense of identity or belonging for those personalities whose underlying sense of identity is flawed. For these individuals, belonging to the terrorist group becomes the most important component of their psychosocial identity.
• These young people find themselves at a time in their life when they are looking to the future with the hope of engaging in meaningful behavior that will be satisfying and get them ahead.
• Their objective circumstances including opportunities for advancement are virtually nonexistent; they find some direction for their religious collective identity but the desperately disadvantaged state of their community leaves them feeling marginalized and lost without a clearly defined collective identity.
• 3.Belongingness-For these alienated individuals from the margins of society, joining a terrorist group represented the first real sense of belonging after a lifetime of rejection, and the terrorist group was to become the family they never had.Terrorist groups may provide a security of family by subjugating individuality to the group identity. A protective cocoon is created that offers shelter from a hostile world.