St Andrews University (Scotland, UK) is advertising for two lecturers in Terrorism Studies:
We are seeking to appoint 2 highly motivated lecturers with a familiarity with an area of Terrorism Studies and a commitment to excellence in the development of teaching materials and curricula for distance learning. These appointments will complement and extend the existing Terrorism Studies team.
The closing date for applications is 20 May.
Irfan Al-Alawi, and Stephen Schwartz (2008, 12 April). Views & Reviews: Radical Muslim doctors and what they mean for the NHS. British Medical Journal 336:834
The disclosure that the leading alleged conspirators in last year’s bombing attempts in London and Glasgow were Muslim doctors sent a shockwave through the worldwide non-Muslim public. The same question was asked everywhere: how can those who are trained to heal turn to terrorism?
Our organisation, the Centre for Islamic Pluralism, has compiled a report, Scientific Training and Radical Islam, which we were preparing when the London and Glasgow events occurred. The report is now complete and available as a free download here. It is a distillation of field research, interpretation of major source materials in Arabic, Farsi, Urdu, and English, and collation of individual perspectives from a team of Muslim researchers. All members of the team are experienced in the observation of Islamist movements throughout the world.
Sadik H. Kassim (in press). The Role of Religion in the Generation of Suicide Bombers. Brief Treatment and Crisis Intervention Advance Access published online on April 9, 2008, doi:10.1093/brief-treatment/mhn003
Suicide terrorism is an international problem that endangers the well-being of whole populations. Standard explanations suggest that religious fanaticism is a primary driving force in the generation of suicide bombers. A growing body of empirically based scholarship, however, indicates that suicide terrorism is a multifactorial phenomenon that cannot easily be explained away as an outcome of religious fanaticism. Religion in general, Islam in particular, plays a minimal direct role in the generation of suicide bombers. This brief article will summarize recent studies regarding the root causes of suicide terrorism as they pertain to the fields of behavioral health, violence, and violence prevention.
Radicalization or Rehabilitation: Understanding the challenge of extremist and radicalized prisoners by Greg Hannah, Lindsay Clutterbuck, Jennifer Rubin, published by RAND, April 2008:
This study is the result of internally funded RAND Corporation research. It seeks to provide a preliminary overview of the challenges posed by radicalized and extremist prisoners, and to explore the potential for the radicalization of young European Muslims in the prison environment. The study draws on the body of existing prison theory literature, historical case examples and contemporary open sources. It draws a number of conclusions about the potential in prison for extremist activity, including radicalization, and highlights a number of areas where further research and action may be desirable.
PDFs available: full report / summary report
Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health press release 4 April 2008:
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s color-coded system for warning the public of the risk of a terrorist attack does not appear to cause undue stress among law enforcement officers, according to a study by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. A review of calls to New Jersey’s Cop 2 Cop crisis intervention hotline found no statistically significant increase in calls with periods of increased alert. The study is published in the March 18, 2008 issue of the International Journal of Emergency Mental Health and is among the first to examine the psychological impact of the alert system on first responders.
The Economist print edition (6 March):
… Is money devoted to counter-terrorism well spent? What claims to be the first serious study [PDF] of its costs and benefits, by economists at the Universities of Texas at Dallas and Alabama, says no. It was commissioned by the Copenhagen Consensus, a think-tank that aims to scrutinise public spending on the world’s woes and to ask “should we be starting from here?”
The authors of the study calculate that worldwide spending on homeland security has risen since 2001 by between $65 billion (if security is narrowly defined) and over $200 billion a year (if one includes the Iraq and Afghan wars). But in either case the benefits are far smaller.
Terrorism, the authors say, has a comparatively small impact on economic activity, reducing GDP in affected countries by perhaps $17 billion in 2005. So although the number of terrorist attacks has fallen, and fewer people have been injured, the imputed economic benefits are limited—just a tenth of the costs.
More.
Klas Borell (2008). Terrorism and Everyday Life in Beirut 2005: Mental Reconstructions, Precautions and Normalization. Acta Sociologica. 2008; 51(1): p. 55-70
Although the psychological stress created by terror has been extensively researched, little has been written about the subjective experience of living with terror. How do people perceive risk and how do they adjust their daily lives? The Lebanese capital Beirut suffered from a wave of bomb attacks following the assassination of Lebanon’s former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri on 14 February 2005. In order to examine people’s reactions and ways of coping with these events, 14 focus group interviews (n = 77) were conducted in targeted areas. The findings suggest that Beirutis could no longer rely on the taken-for-granted routines of daily life. By changing their routes to school or work and avoiding public places, they restricted their daily activities. However, the data also suggest that targeted people attempted to normalize their everyday lives. Two strategies were employed. The first can be described as bracketing in time and space, which means that people tried to benefit from periods they perceived as moments of reprieve, and that they defined business and private space as safe havens. Bracketing can also be described as re-normalization, i.e. as an attempt to return to the previous state of `normality’. The other strategy can be described as crisis normalization and means that the new evaluations of the risks and new patterns of action adopted, which originally deviated from people’s established routines, themselves became routinized.
A slightly dated article that recently came to my attention:
We investigated the idea that a charismatic leader with a controversial message is most likely to persuade people in times of terror, because in those times people have a high need for vision, and vision is what a charismatic leader provides. In addition, we argued that the leader’s message should contain a pro-attitudinal position as well, as this makes the counter-attitudinal message more palatable. In line with our hypotheses, we found in Experiment 1 that thinking about terrorism increases people’s need for vision. Experiment 2 revealed that only when people have a high need for vision they will be influenced by a controversial charismatic leader. Experiment 3 showed that existential threats also directly increase the influence of a controversial charismatic leader. Further, this was especially so when the charismatic leader was both attractive and communicated his message in a charismatic way. Finally, Experiment 4 revealed that after thinking about their own death or about terrorist attacks, people were most likely to be persuaded by a controversial charismatic leader whose counter-attitudinal message also contained pro-attitudinal statements. Together, this research suggests that in times of terror people’s need for vision increases, which opens them up to a counter-attitudinal message of a charismatic leader as long as this message also includes some pro-attitudinal statements. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
This post provides a unique opportunity for a strong team leader to develop research to help solve some of society’s most pressing social problems. In particular this job plays a key role in providing the evidence base for the development of policy to reduce the threat of terrorism. It will also contribute to measuring performance and supporting policy development and delivery in this area. This is a high profile post in the Home Office and we are therefore looking for a strong leader with a track record in motivating teams to deliver high quality analysis, evidence and recommendations.
More information via the link above. The closing date is 16th April 2008
Via Docuticker:
The study’s main conclusion is that the danger to U.S. security from inmate adherents to nontraditional religions is not the number of adherents to Islam or to White supremacy religions, but rather the potential for small groups of radical believers to instigate terrorist acts upon their release from custody. … Although some conversions to these religions are motivated by personal crises and the need for protection, the primary motivation for conversions is spiritual searching. Although most of the prisoner conversions to these nontraditional religions exert a positive influence on inmate attitudes and behaviors, some carry the potential for ideologically inspired criminal attitudes and behaviors. This risk is especially high in overcrowded maximum-security prisons where there are few rehabilitation programs, a shortage of chaplains, and gang influences. The most significant threat stems from fringe elements of Prison Islam. Former gang rivals are joining forces under Islamic banners. Neo-Nazis are becoming Sunni Muslims. There is growing conflict within inmate Islam as various factions of this faith compete for followers. Data were obtained from interviews with 15 prison chaplains, 9 gang intelligence officials, and 30 inmates incarcerated for violent crimes in Florida and California.
PDF here.
Via Docuticker:
This special volume of Current Trends in Islamist Ideology is addressed to a most important subject—the subject of the organization, or group of organizations, known as the Muslim Brotherhood. The importance of this subject partially derives from the importance of another related subject: the worldwide Islamic phenomenon and move ment variously known as Islamism, Salafism, radical Islam, militant Islam, political Islam and the like. Since the events of 9/11, we have all learned that understanding this movement properly—broadly, deeply and accurately—is a very great necessity. It is a necessity if we are to understand the present-day world situation and crisis and if we are to devise sensible policies to address them. To this end, an understanding of the Muslim Brotherhood is absolutely essential and arguably more important than anything else. Nevertheless, over the past few years the Brotherhood has not stood in the foreground of discussion and reflection. The purpose of this volume is to address—or rather, to begin to redress—that oversight or neglect.
PDF here.
Via Docuticker:
This article begins by reviewing how Iran has used terrorism in the past and how this has changed over the years. The article then assesses U.S. attempts to press Iran with regard to terrorism and why they have met with little success. With this assessment in mind, the article argues that, while the author believes Iranian terrorism remains a threat, Tehran is not likely to pass chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons to terrorists. The article concludes with recommendations for decreasing Iran’s use of terrorism in general and the chances of it transferring chemical or other unconventional weapons to terrorists in particular.
PDF here.
Via Docuticker:
In this paper we study the causal impact of police on crime by looking at what happened to crime before and after the terror attacks that hit central London in July 2005. The attacks resulted in a large redeployment of police officers to central London boroughs as compared to outer London – in fact, police deployment in central London increased by over 30 percent in the six weeks following the July 7 bombings. During this time crime fell significantly in central relative to outer London. Study of the timing of the crime reductions and their magnitude, the types of crime which were more likely to be affected and a series of robustness tests looking at possible biases all make us confident that our research approach identifies a causal impact of police on crime. Implementing an instrumental variable approach shows an elasticity of crime with respect to police of approximately -0.3, so that a 10 percent increase in police activity reduces crime by around 3 percent.
PDF here.
The latest issue of Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 31(4) is now available online and includes the following articles:
National Science Foundation press release, 26 Mar 2008
Does poverty breed terrorism? A researcher from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government says there is no evidence of a significant relationship between a country’s wealth and level of terrorism.
New research suggests political freedom and geographic factors contribute significantly to causes of terrorism, challenging the common view that terrorism is rooted in poverty.
“There is no significant relationship between a country’s wealth and level of terrorism once other factors like the country’s level of political freedom are taken into account,” says Alberto Abadie, public policy professor at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.
Abadie’s review of the World Market Research Centre’s Global Terrorism Index found no clear correlation between terrorism and poverty. Abadie’s research was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).