Volume XIII, Issue 5 October 2019 PERSPECTIVES on TERRORISM Volume 13, Issue 5
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ISSN 2334-3745 Volume XIII, Issue 5 October 2019 PERSPECTIVES ON TERRORISM Volume 13, Issue 5 Table of Contents Welcome from the Editors...............................................................................................................................1 Articles Islamist Terrorism, Diaspora Links and Casualty Rates................................................................................2 by James A. Piazza and Gary LaFree “The Khilafah’s Soldiers in Bengal”: Analysing the Islamic State Jihadists and Their Violence Justification Narratives in Bangladesh...............................................................................................................................22 by Saimum Parvez Islamic State Propaganda and Attacks: How are they Connected?..............................................................39 by Nate Rosenblatt, Charlie Winter and Rajan Basra Towards Open and Reproducible Terrorism Studies: Current Trends and Next Steps...............................61 by Sandy Schumann, Isabelle van der Vegt, Paul Gill and Bart Schuurman Taking Terrorist Accounts of their Motivations Seriously: An Exploration of the Hermeneutics of Suspicion.......................................................................................................................................................74 by Lorne L. Dawson An Evaluation of the Islamic State’s Influence over the Abu Sayyaf ...........................................................90 by Veera Singam Kalicharan Research Notes Countering Violent Extremism Globally: A New Global CVE Dataset.....................................................102 by Caitlin Ambrozik Profiles of Islamist Militants in Bangladesh................................................................................................112 by Shafi Md Mostofa and Dr. Natalie Doyle Adversity, Criminality, and Mental Health Problems in Jihadis in Dutch Police Files.............................130 by Anton Weenink Resources Counterterrorism Bookshelf: 12 Books on Terrorism & Counter-Terrorism-Related Subjects...............143 by Joshua Sinai Joan Smith, Home Grown: How Domestic Violence Turns Men Into Terrorists..........................................146 Reviewed by Christine Boelema Robertus Marc Sageman, The London Bombings........................................................................................................148 Reviewed by Anthony Richards James Forest, The Terrorism Lectures (3rd Edition)...................................................................................150 Reviewed by Edward Valla ISSN 2334-3745 October 2019 PERSPECTIVES ON TERRORISM Volume 13, Issue 5 Bibliography: Terrorism by Region—Indian Subcontinent.......................................................................153 Compiled and selected by Judith Tinnes 60+ Academic Theses on Victims of Terrorism, Violent Extremism, and Political Violence...................184 Compiled and selected by Ryan Scrivens Recent Online Resources for the Analysis of Terrorism and Related Subjects..........................................189 Compiled and selected by Berto Jongman Announcements Conference Calendar....................................................................................................................................229 Compiled by Reiniers Bergema About Perspectives on Terrorism.................................................................................................................239 ISSN 2334-3745 II October 2019 PERSPECTIVES ON TERRORISM Volume 13, Issue 5 Welcome from the Editors Dear Reader, We are pleased to announce the release of Volume XIII, Issue 5 (October 2019) of Perspectives on Terrorism, available now at: https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/PoT. Our free and independent online journal is a publication of the Terrorism Research Initiative (TRI) and the Institute of Security and Global Affairs (ISGA) of Leiden University’s Campus The Hague. Now in its thirteenth year, Perspectives on Terrorism has over 8,600 regular e-mail subscribers and many more occasional readers and website visitors worldwide. The Articles of its six annual issues are fully peer reviewed by external referees while its Research and Policy Notes, Special Correspondence and other content are subject to internal editorial quality control. This issue begins with a research article by James Piazza and Gary LaFree in which analysis of terrorist incidents from 1970 to 2016 reveals that attacks by Islamist groups produce fewer casualties than attacks by non-Islamist religious groups, and that Islamic diaspora communities impose tactical restraints on terrorist organizations with which they are linked. This is followed by Saimum Parvez’s analysis of Islamic State’s violent activities and narratives in Bangladesh, and an examination of Islamic State’s propaganda by Nate Rosenblatt, Charlie Winter and Rajan Basra. In the next article, Sandy Schumann, Isabelle van der Vegt, Paul Gill and Bart Schuurman make a compelling argument in favour of open source and replicable research in terrorism studies. Lorne Dawson follows with an exploration of how terrorists articulate their own motivations behind terrorist attacks, and Veera Singam Kalicharan concludes this section with his analysis of the Islamic State’s relationship with the terrorist group Abu Sayyaf. This issue of Perspectives on Terrorism also features three Research Notes, beginning with Caitlin Ambrozik’s introduction of a new dataset on countering violent extremism efforts worldwide. This is followed by a look at profiles of Islamist militants in Bangladesh by Shafi Md Mostofa and Natalie Doyle, and the section concludes with Anton Weenink’s exploration of what police files reveal about mental health issues among jihadists in the Netherlands. The Resources section includes our regular contributions from Joshua Sinai (book reviews), Judith Tinnes (bibliography), Ryan Scrivens (theses), Berto Jongman (web resources), and Reinier Bergema (conference calendar), as well as book reviews by Anthony Richards, Edward Valla and Christine Boelema Robertus. The current issue of Perspectives on Terrorism was prepared by Co-Editor James J.F. Forest and Associate Editor Rashmi Singh, with the assistance of Alex P. Schmid, the Editor-in-Chief of the journal, our Associate Editor for IT Christine Boelema Robertus, and Editorial Assistants Jodi Moore and Brody McDonald. ISSN 2334-3745 1 October 2019 PERSPECTIVES ON TERRORISM Volume 13, Issue 5 Islamist Terrorism, Diaspora Links and Casualty Rates by James A. Piazza and Gary LaFree Abstract We explore the widespread belief that Islamist groups are especially violent and also consider the possibility that links with transnational diasporas may reduce casualties by Islamist terrorist organizations. Analyzing between 77,000 and 82,000 terrorist incidents from 1970 to 2016, we find that attacks by Islamist groups produce fewer casualties than attacks by non-Islamist religious groups. We also find that Islamist groups with links to diaspora kin abroad commit lower casualty terrorist attacks. We explain these findings by arguing that Islamic diaspora communities impose tactical restraints on terrorist organizations with which they are linked. Diasporas constitute a major political audience and source of support for terrorist organizations and provide an audience outside the homeland that may be negatively affected by extremely violent attacks. Keywords: Islamist Terrorism, Diasporas, Lethality, Casualties, Quantitative Analysis Introduction One of the most consistent conclusions about terrorist attacks over the past half century is that they have grown deadlier.[1] In 1975, terrorism expert Brian Jenkins famously argued that “terrorists want a lot of people watching and a lot of people listening, and not a lot of people dead.”[2] A little more than 25 years later, Jenkins amended his earlier statement to note that “Many of today’s terrorists want a lot of people watching and a lot of people dead.”[3] Jenkins’ shift is largely supported by data on terrorist attacks. For example, using the International Terrorism: Attributes of Terrorist Events (ITERATE) data from 1968 to 2003, Enders and Sandler show that from the late 1970s through the early 1990s, fatal terrorist attacks were about 18% of all attacks. The proportion of fatal attacks in ITERATE jumped to 28% in the mid-1990s.[4] Similarly, based on the RAND Corporation’s Terrorism Knowledge Database from 1968 through 2005, Piazza shows that the average number of victims per international terrorist attack increased from 2.1 for the period 1968 to 1979, to 3.8 in the 1980s, 10.3 in the 1990s and 10.9 from 2000 to 2005.[5] Finally, LaFree, Dugan and Miller, using the Global Terrorism Database (GTD), show that on average terrorist attacks during the 1970s claimed one fatality per incident, but more than five fatalities per incident by the late 1990s.[6] This increase in the deadliness of terrorism is frequently linked to the rise of Islamist-fueled terrorism.[7] In an influential book, Rapoport contends that the world has experienced four waves of terrorism over the past 150 years: anarchist, anti-colonial, new left, and religious. He goes on to argue that the religious wave began in the 1980s, that Islam is the most important religion in this wave, and that attacks by al Qaeda exemplify it.[8] In an analysis of worldwide terrorist attacks between 1970 and 2014, LaFree and Dugan find that six of the ten deadliest attacks involved Islamist perpetrators.[9] In this article