Volume XV, Issue 2 April 2021 PERSPECTIVES on TERRORISM Volume 15, Issue 2
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ISSN 2334-3745 Volume XV, Issue 2 April 2021 PERSPECTIVES ON TERRORISM Volume 15, Issue 2 Table of Contents Welcome from the Editors...............................................................................................................................1 Articles Bringing Religiosity Back In: Critical Reflection on the Explanation of Western Homegrown Religious Terrorism (Part II).........................................................................................................................................2 by Lorne Dawson Understanding the Motivations of “Lone Wolf” Terrorists: The “Bathtub” Model.....................................23 by Boaz Ganor Radical Beings? How Group Identities Impact Willingness to Justify Terrorism.......................................33 by Eline Drury Løvlien Measuring Impact, Uncovering Bias? Citation Analysis of Literature on Women in Terrorism................58 by Jessica Davis, Leah West, and Amarnath Amarasingam The European Database of Terrorist Offenders (EDT): Development, Usability and Options...................77 by Daphne Alberda, Nils Duits, Kees van den Bos, Arin H. Ayanian, Andreas Zick & Maaike Kempes U.S. Extremism on Telegram: Fueling Disinformation, Conspiracy Theories, and Accelerationism......100 by Samantha Walther and Andrew McCoy The Devil’s in the Details - or is He? The Ethics and Politics of Terrorism Data.......................................125 by Benjamin V. Allison Special Correspondence QAnon: Radical Opinion versus Radical Action.........................................................................................142 by Sophia Moskalenko & Clark McCauley Research Notes 40 Terrorism Databases and Data Sets: A New Inventory..........................................................................147 by Neil G. Bowie 20 Databases on (Violent and Armed) Conflicts........................................................................................162 by Ishaansh Singh Resources Book Review: Omar Ashour. How ISIS Fights. Military Tactics in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Egypt..............172 Reviewed by Alex P. Schmid Book Review: Teun Voeten, Mexican Drug Violence: Hybrid Warfare, Predatory Capitalism and the Logic of Cruelty .....................................................................................................................................................174 Reviewed by Martijn Kitzen Counterterrorism Bookshelf: Five Books on Terrorism & Counter-Terrorism-Related Subjects............176 Reviewed by Joshua Sinai ISSN 2334-3745 I April 2021 PERSPECTIVES ON TERRORISM Volume 15, Issue 2 Bibliography: Terrorism and the Media (including the Internet) (Part 5)................................................179 Compiled and selected by Judith Tinnes Bibliography: Al-Shabaab............................................................................................................................240 Compiled and selected by David Teiner Bibliography: Fear and Terror......................................................................................................................274 Compiled and selected by Sedat Kula 60+ Full-Text Academic Theses (Ph.D. and M.A.) on Rebel Governance by Non-State Actors written in English between 2011 and 2021 .................................................................................................................287 Compiled and selected by Brody McDonald Recent Online Resources for the Analysis of Terrorism and Related Subjects..........................................292 by Berto Jongman Announcements From TRI’s National Networks of Ph.D. Thesis Writers: List of 30+ Dutch and Flemish Ph.D. Theses in Progress and Completed..............................................................................................................................326 Prepared by Jeanine de Roy van Zuijdewijn Conference Monitor/Calendar of Events (April 2021)...............................................................................333 Compiled by Olivia Kearney About Perspectives on Terrorism..................................................................................................................338 ISSN 2334-3745 II April 2021 PERSPECTIVES ON TERRORISM Volume 15, Issue 2 Words of Welcome from the Editors Dear Reader, We are pleased to announce the release of Volume XV, Issue 2 (April 2021) of Perspectives on Terrorism (ISSN 2334-3745). Our independent online journal is an Open Access publication of the Terrorism Research Initiative (TRI), Vienna, and the Institute of Security and Global Affairs (ISGA) of Leiden University’s Campus in The Hague. All past and recent issues are freely available online at URL: https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/perspec- tives-on-terrorism. Perspectives on Terrorism (PoT) is indexed by JSTOR, SCOPUS, and Google Scholar where it ranks No. 3 of journals in the field of Terrorism Studies. Now in its fifteenth year, it has over 9,400 registered subscribers and many more occasional readers and website visitors in academia, government and civil society. TheArticles of its six annual issues are fully peer-reviewed by external referees while its Research Notes and other content are subject to internal editorial quality control. The current issue features sevenArticles , eight Resources, two Research Notes, two Announcements and one Special Correspondence. The last addresses theQAnon movement, a topical security concern in the United States, and explores whether or not it poses an exaggerated threat. It is from the hands of Sophia Moskalenko and Clark McCauley. The opening article is Part II of a longer text by Lorne Dawson wherein he critically examines whether re- ligious motivations have been misrepresented in relation to religious terrorism (Part I was published in the February issue of our journal). The second article, “The Bathtub Model,” by Boaz Ganor offers a better un- derstanding of single actor terrorism, based on the Israeli experience. Next Eline Drury Løvlien introduces her findings from a large N study on some people’s willingness to justify terrorism, based on data from the European Values Study. In the fourth article, Jessica Davis, Leah West, and Amarnath Amarasingam offer a citation analysis on women in terrorism. Daphne Alberda and her colleagues introduce the European Data- base of Terrorists in a fifth article. This is followed by an analysis of extremism on the Telegram messaging application from Samantha Walther and Andrew McCoy. In the last article of this issue, Benjamin V. Allison explores the ethics and politics of terrorism data, based on a sample of U.S. databases. These Articles and the Special Correspondence are followed by two Research Notes from Neil Bowie and Ishaansh Singh. The first presents Bowie’s new inventory of databases and datasets on terrorism while the second does the same for (violent) conflicts. Our Resources section open with a review by the editor of Omar Ashour’s study ‘How ISIS Fights’, and a re- view by Martijn Kitzen of Mexican Drug Violence by Teun Voeten. These are followed by Joshua Sinai’s regular Counter-Terrorism Bookshelf and a series of bibliographies by Judith Tinnes, David Teiner, Sedat Kula and Brody McDonald. The Resources section of Perspectives on Terrorism concludes with Berto Jongman’s overview of new web-based resources on terrorism. The Announcements section features, next to the regular Conference Calendar by Olivia Kearney, an over- view of more than 30 doctoral dissertations under way or recently competed, compiled by Jeanine de Roy van Zuijdewijn, the coordinator of one of the national and (sub-) regional networks of Ph.D. thesis writers of the Terrorism Research Initiative. All the texts of the current issue of Perspectives on Terrorism have been edited by James Forest and Alex Schmid, the journal’s principal editors. Editorial Assistant Jodi Moore handled proof-reading, while the technical on- line launch of the April 2021 issue of our journal has been in the hands of Associate Editor for IT, Christine Boelema Robertus. ISSN 2334-3745 1 April 2021 PERSPECTIVES ON TERRORISM Volume 15, Issue 2 Bringing Religiosity Back In: Critical Reflection on the Explanation of Western Homegrown Religious Terrorism (Part II) By Lorne Dawson Abstract An unusual feature of the social scientific study of religious terrorism is the erasure of religiosity as a significant motivational factor. This article delineates and criticizes the presence of this peculiar interpretive preference, demonstrating that it is methodologically unsound and theoretically and empirically unhelpful. In Part I of the article, published by the same author under the same title in the February 2021 issue of Perspectives on Terrorism, the foundations of the critique were established. In this article, Part II, three types of arguments commonly used to minimize the role of religiosity in motivating religious terrorism are examined. These arguments are identified by the primary interpretive errors they rely on. Some arguments (1) mistakenly treat the religious background and knowledge of homegrown jihadists as a sound indicator of their religiosity; others (2) inappropriately apply a modern Western normative conception of religion to homegrown jihadists; and some arguments (3) rely on an overly dichotomized conception of the relationship of social processes and ideology in the process of radicalization. The critique argues the need to develop a more refined conception of the role of ideology, and more specifically religiosity, in the determination of