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The Geopolitics of Religious Terrorism

Steven M. Radil, Department of Geography, Ball State University Colin Flint, Department of Geography, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

1. Introduction

The agenda of social scientists and practitioners with interest in international security

issues has become dominated by the topic of terrorism. Catalyzed by the attacks of September

11, 2001, and given a dubious academic crutch by the revived notion of a ‘Clash of

Civilizations,’ it appeared as if new geopolitical actors and agendas had suddenly materialized to

reshape the very essence of international security (Huntington, 1993; Esposito, 2002; Stern,

2004; Hoffman, 2006; White, 2011). No longer was the focus upon inter-state competition and

the possible resort to ‘old wars’ in a Clausewitzian sense (Black, 2010). Instead, it was claimed

we had moved to an era of ‘new wars’ in which an ugly assortment of criminal, religious,

ideological and state groups fought for the ability to keep fighting and to attain more ill-gotten

gains (Kaldor, 2001). Globalization, the military dominance of the United States, cultural

differences, and terrorism as the chosen method of conflict were seen to underlie security

practitioners’ interest in “asymmetric warfare” (Kaldor, 2001; Kahler and Walter, 2006) and

academic interest in religious terrorism (Juergensmeyer, 2000; Stern, 2004). Though the

contemporary impact and threat of religiously motivated terrorism is hard to deny, our approach

is to look at the geography of religious terrorism to critically engage its “newness” (Rapoport,

2001; Flint, 2003; Flint and Radil, 2009). In particular, we engage whether religious terrorism is

just a new representation of old political motivations or whether new geographies of terrorism

are emerging.

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Our investigation of these questions is organized in the following way. First, we

introduce terrorism as a form of geopolitical agency that occurs, but is not determined by,

geographic settings. Religious terrorist groups are geopolitical actors and their actions are part of

the complex process of the dynamic social construction of space; a construction that is situated

within existing social and geographic settings but may change existing patterns. Second, we

move from the general idea of the social construction of space to the key geopolitical actors in

this analysis, religious terrorist groups. We introduce contemporary religious terrorism using the

historical framework of Rapoport’s (2001) waves of terrorism, and discuss their geographical

expression. Third, we discuss why religious terrorism is expected to produce a new geography of

violence. In the fourth section we introduce our case study of terrorism in India to investigate

whether terrorist activity is indeed becoming increasingly motivated by religious belief and, if

so, whether it actually displays new geographic patterns. Tentative conclusions are offered to

close the chapter.

2. Terrorists as geopolitical agents

Though theoretically and methodologically eclectic, the discipline of human geography may be

defined by one overarching axiom: that the built environment is socially constructed, or it is the

product of individual and collective action (Massey, 2005). Moreover, the process is recursive in

that the geography of the built environment is the setting which, to some degree, limits the

possibility of future actions while subsequent actions maintain but also alter the geographic

setting and political and social possibilities. The recursive process is one that identifies a range of

possible or likely actions by individuals and groups, but is not deterministic (Agnew, 1987).

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Geopolitics is a particular form of the social construction of space that focuses on

political actions and the political geographies that they form and operate within (Flint, 2011).

Historically, geopolitics was the preserve of statesmen with normative agendas for their own

state’s foreign policy agendas (Dodds and Atkinson, 2000). However, the revival of geopolitics

has reclaimed the topic for social scientists wishing to analyze rather than proscribe the world. In

addition, the cast of actors involved in geopolitics has expanded beyond the singular

concentration upon states to include social movements, multi-national companies, religious

organizations, and the media (for a review see Cox, Low and Robinson, 2008).

Terrorism, and religious terrorism in particular, is readily accommodated in the new

geopolitical research agenda. Terrorism is a form of political activity that operates within

existing political geographic settings with an agenda to disrupt them and impose new spatial

political arrangements (Flint, 2003). Hoffman (2006: 37) provocatively refers to terrorists as

“altruists” to illustrate how they develop a belief system that frames their violent actions as

necessary to right the wrongs imposed upon a marginalized social group. Such rhetoric claims

that all conventional, and peaceful, political avenues have been closed and the resort to violence

is the only means left to pursue a political agenda that will offer a long sought after justice for an

oppressed group. In other words, the geopolitical agency of terrorist groups is one in which the

violence is calculated to have a lasting political impact.

From a geographic perspective, Hoffman’s terminology requires a further element that

helps us to understand the reason for the sense of injustice and oppression and also highlights the

implications of a successful terrorist campaign. The perceived goals of terrorist groups can be

more fully identified as political geographic altruism (Flint, 2011: 177). The conceptual

framework of the social construction of space requires us to think of politics and geography as

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mutually constructed. Hence, any sense of political injustice is associated with a geographical

arrangement that creates and perpetuates the injustice. In turn, any proposed political alternative

is likely to require the construction of a new geographic arrangement. The inseparable

connection between politics and geography, with regard to terrorism, is probably most clear in

the arena of national separatism. For example, the demands of the Irish Republican Army or the

Basque separatists Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) are framed within an understanding that the

existing territorial expressions of the United Kingdom and Spain, respectively, are unjust; in that

they do not allow the full expression of Irish and Basque national identity. In turn, the goals of

these groups are a re-drawing of political boundaries in a way that is seen to enable national

liberation. In sum, the political solution requires a new geography, and the existing political

injustices are an expression of a “flawed” or oppressive geographical arrangement.

Geography also plays a role in the way that terrorists strategize. The choice of target is,

partially, a geographic decision based upon the symbolic value of geographic settings. Timothy

McVeigh’s 1995 attack on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City was not

based solely on the politics of identifying the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms as

unconstitutional oppressors of the people, but also as a statement that this was a battle in and for

the geographic realm of the “American heartland.” The decision of the IRA to enact a campaign

on the British “mainland” sent a message that the question of Irish republicanism was a British

problem and not just Ulster’s. In each case, the geographic setting of terrorist activity has a

symbolic value connected to a general understanding of the cultural and historic significance of

particular spaces or places (Flint, 2005: 200). With regard to religious terrorism, Al Qaeda’s

representation of the Arabian Peninsula as the spiritual home of Islam has provided the basis for

its justification of the US as both an invading and infidel force.

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There is one more component of geopolitics that is useful for our discussion. Geopolitics

is both practice and representation (Flint, 2011: 35), in that it is not only the actions of

geopolitical actors that are important but the way they are represented. Representation is the

discourse used by an actor in an attempt to portray their actions as necessary and just. Of course,

in the competitive world of geopolitics opponents offer their counter-representations. In the

classic statement “one person’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter,” terrorist groups portray

themselves as liberators while the state authorities they fight portray them as “murderers.” The

identification of geopolitics as both practice and representation is not simply a semantic exercise

or a call for a discursive analysis (Ó Tuathail, 1996). The issue is that we should not identify the

goals and identification of terrorist groups just by what they say but also, arguably primarily, by

what they do. In other words geopolitical actions speak louder than geopolitical words in

identifying the purpose of a terrorist group.

We take this stance in order to critically investigate contemporary terrorism and the

argument that we are living through something fundamentally new: an era of religious terrorism.

Moreover, we believe that the mutual construction of geography and politics provides a means to

tackle this question. Religious terrorism is believed to have fundamentally different objectives

than previous expressions of terrorism, motivated by nationalist and ideological agendas

(Rapoport, 2001). The geographic perspective leads to hypotheses that changing agendas are

likely to create new geographies of terrorist activity, including intra-state patterns of terrorist

attacks. Our case study of India is an empirical examination of trends in terrorist activities to see

if geographic patterns of activity expected from a rise in religious terrorist activity are actually

occurring. But before we can focus on a particular case study we must introduce the broad

historical trends of terrorist activity to situate and understand contemporary religious terrorism.

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3. Waves of terrorism

Rapoport (2001) has identified four waves of terrorism in the modern era. These broad

categorizations are useful in situating contemporary terrorism, and assessing the argument that

we are currently experiencing a fundamentally new period dominated by religiously motivated

terror (Juergensmeyer, 2000). Each of these periods has a related geographic expression (Flint,

2011: 180-184). However, one geographic issue that is still to be addressed is the change in the

geographical location of terrorist attacks that is implied in the conceptual understanding of how

and why terrorism is inspired by religious belief. To understand the intra-state geography of

terrorism that is the focus of our case study we must first situate religious terrorism in broader

historical trends.

The first wave of modern terrorism occurred, generally speaking, between 1880 and 1914

(Rapoport, 2001). The main motivating force was the ideology of anarchism and its goals of

revolutionary change against monarchies and aristocratic regimes. The gradual electoral and

social reform that European governments were, reluctantly, making were seen by the anarchists

as a mere sop, but one that could dampen the revolutionary ardor of the masses. Hence,

anarchists believed that dramatic events – such as the assassination of prominent political elite

figures – would act as a trigger to tip society across a threshold and into revolution. The

geographic focus of this wave of terrorism was intra-state, or the overthrow of particular national

governments to be replaced by a new form of national political organization (Flint, 2011: 180).

The key event that marked the end of this period, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand

in Sarajevo in June 1914 illustrates that the political motivation of terrorism was already

changing.

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The second wave of terrorism, roughly 1920-1960, occurred within a context of

decolonization: Specifically, the dismantling of the formal European empires in the aftermath of

the First and Second World Wars and the rise of US power that emphasized an open world

economy (Rapoport, 2001; Smith, 2003). Following on from the assassination of Franz

Ferdinand, the inspirational power of anarchism was replaced by the ideology of nationalism:

The belief that individuals were members of national groups that had a right to independent

sovereign and territorial states. The geographic strategy of this wave of terrorism was aimed at

creating new nation-states, rather than changing the form of government in existing states as in

the first wave (Flint, 2011: 180). Examples of terrorism in this wave include Irgun’s activities

and the desire to create the state of Israel and the Mau Mau campaign for an independent Kenya.

The third wave of terrorism, generally speaking 1960-1990, maintained the nationalist

motivations of the previous wave but added a twist of political ideology and a new geographical

expression (Rapoport, 2001). Political ideology of the extreme left and right became part of the

terrorist lexicon. In some cases this was the sole focus – such as the Red Brigade and Baader

Meinhof Gang – while in others it blended with nationalist goals- such as the Irish National

Liberation Army (Laqueur, 1987: 214). More significantly for the argument we make in this

chapter, the organization and strategy of terrorist organizations became transnational (Flint,

2011: 181). Groups cooperated with each other for training purposes. Furthermore, terrorist

actions were undertaken to ensure a global impact. The PLO’s killing of Israeli athletes at the

Munich Olympic Games in 1972 was staged in a manner that the whole world could no longer

claim ignorance of the nationalist aspirations of the Palestinian people. The practice of aircraft

hijacking also ensured that terrorist activities were transnational: A plane of a particular national

airline being hijacked en route from one country to another and being diverted to yet another

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country transnationalized acts of terror. Hence, though the geography of terrorist aims remained

largely focused on territorial states and the politics of nationalism the geographic expression of

terrorist activity was loosening its bonds to specific national territories.

The fourth wave of terrorism, roughly the 1990s to the present day, displays a

continuation of this geographic trend but with a dramatic change in the motivation for terrorist

activity. Rapoport (2001) claims that we are living in an era of religious terrorism; described as a

fundamental shift and an unprecedented situation. Though focus in the US and Europe may

simply identify religious terrorism with Islamic extremism, it is actually identified as a global

phenomenon. Extremist Christian, Jewish, Sikh, and Buddhist groups have also been identified

as advocating and committing acts of terrorism (Juergensmeyer, 2000).

The trend towards pan-religious extremism is suggested by mapping terrorism events

associated with religion. As seen in Figure 1, we have mapped the number of events by country

using data from the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) available from the National Consortium

for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START, 2011). The GTD contains

information on terrorist events around the world from 1970 through 2010, including a variety of

information about incident locations, groups involved in attacks, and the types of targets.

Mapping incidents where religion was a primary targeting motive suggests that religious

terrorism is a global phenomenon with incidents present in numerous countries all around the

world. While the specific motivations behind the acts of violence are not universal (for example

the high number of incidents in the US is attributable to abortion-related violence which is nearly

unique to the US), this global geography bolsters Jurgensmeyer’s (2000) claim that religious

terrorism is more than just Islamic extremism.

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Figure 1. In keeping with Jurgensmeyer’s notion of pan-religious extremism, the global geography of religiously-motivated terrorism belies the notion that extremism is simply an Islamic phenomenon.

4. The Geography of Religious Terrorism

The geographic expression of religious terrorism, as conceived by Western academics, is

possibly a fundamental change and one with worrying implications. Juergensmeyer (2000)

claims that religious terrorists are fighting what they perceive as a “cosmic war” – a war over

good against evil adjudicated by a supreme deity. The implication is that religious terrorism will

provoke a greater level of violence than terrorism motivated by nationalist or ideological goals.

The reasoning behind this logic rests on the assumption that secular inspired terrorists realize that

at some stage they are likely to engage in a political negotiation with state authority. Hence,

secular groups balance a belief that they must commit atrocities in order to be placed on the

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political agenda with a strategy to keep the level of violence within certain bounds to enable a

government to justify the morality of talking with them. Religious terrorists, fighting for their

understanding of what a supreme deity demands of them, have no interest in potential

negotiation with secular authorities and instead are compelled to commit massive acts of

violence that will usher in a period of final judgment for mankind. In addition, religiously

motivated terrorism may also be seen as a performance intended to reach a broad audience,

beyond state elites, to communicate the ideals such groups are fighting for (Jurgensmeyer, 2000:

124). Accordingly, constructing the broadest possible audience demands increasingly spectacular

acts of violence.

However, going back to our definition of geopolitics that identifies the interaction of

practice and representation (Flint, 2011: 35), what a geopolitical actor claims may just be a form

of justification or public image that belies underlying motivations and strategies. Most scholarly

studies of terrorism, like Jurgenmeyer’s (2000), focus almost exclusively on the representations

of the groups that use this particular form of violence but pay little heed to potential

inconsistencies between the practices of these groups and their representations. Rather than focus

on representations, we instead consider the actual practices of terrorism across Rapoport’s (2001)

third wave of secular terrorism and fourth wave of religious terrorism. We consider practices

because we would expect the geography of secular terrorism to be quite different from that of

religious terrorism. For instance, terrorism motivated by national separatism is more likely to

have a geographic expression in the areas that are at the heart of the territorial claim, with also

some activity in urban centers associated with political control of the claimed areas, such as a

national capital or provincial capital. On the other hand, if Jurgensmeyer’s (2000) claims are

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correct, we expect that religious terrorism would target population centers in an attempt to inflict

maximum casualties and to communicate to the broadest possible audience.

By theorizing the material geographies of terrorism in this way and drawing on

geopolitics as both practice and representation, we also provide an opportunity to consider if the

practices of religious terrorism actually differ from those of secular terrorism. If the practices do

differ, then our findings would support the arguments that religious terrorism is indeed a unique

phenomenon with a correspondingly unique set of issues at its core as argued by Jurgensmeyer

(2000) and Rapoport (2001). However, if we see little difference in the practices of religious and

secular terrorism, we may be left to conclude that all that is really new is the choice of

representation to portray large-scale violence as necessary and just.

As our approach is to consider the practices of terrorism, we have chosen to focus our

analysis on a particular state where both types of motivations for terrorism are present. While the

global geography of religiously motivated terrorism suggests more than a few candidates, we

focus on the geography of terrorism within the state of India. Since independence in 1950, India

has suffered from protracted communal and terroristic violence between Hindus, Muslims, and

Sikhs. While much of the violence has direct roots with the partition of India and the creation of

Pakistan and East Pakistan (which later gained full independence and is now called Bangladesh),

religion has been central to many of these conflicts as a basis for collective identity.

Additionally, India has also seen a long-running Maoist insurgency. The Naxalite movement has

engaged in violence since the mid-1970s, aimed at ushering in Marxist-Leninist style political

and economic systems within India. Put succinctly, India has a long history of both religiously-

and secularly-motived terrorism and constitutes an ideal case to consider our argument.

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The specifics of our approach are as follows. First, by drawing on the above arguments

about differing geographies of secular terrorism and religious terrorism, we would expect

religious terrorism to be a largely urban phenomenon within India. The perceived need to

commit spectacular acts of violence (meaning large number of victims and witnesses) is

expected to lead to a strategic focus on cities as the likeliest stage for the ‘performance.’ In

contrast, secular terrorism is less likely to be an exclusively urban phenomenon due to the

perceived need to challenge state control in all contested areas, including rural areas, smaller

villages and minor cities or towns in the urban hierarchy in India (e.g., Lohman and Flint, 2010).

Second, by drawing on Rapport’s arguments about shifting motivations for terrorism between

historic waves, we would expect a corresponding shift in the geography of terrorist attacks over

time within India, moving beyond contested areas and into major population centers.

Taking on these questions requires a robust set of data on the geography of terrorism over

time and for that we have used the GTD (START, 2011). The GTD is a longitudinal dataset,

covering terrorism from 1970 to 2010. As such, it spans the two most recent waves of terrorism

in Rapoport’s formulation, including what Rapoport sees as the nationalist/ideological

motivations for terrorism through the 1970s and 80s and the religious motivations for terrorism

from 1990 on. The GTD is also a geographically disaggregated dataset as it records the

geographic location of incidents within states as precisely as possible. As a practical matter, this

often means that incidents are assigned to the smallest administrative areal unit in a particular

county when more detailed information is not available. However, even when incidents are

geographically aggregated in this way the GTD also codes for incident location based on an

urban/rural typology. These twin features of the GTD allow an examination of changing space-

time patterns of terrorism within India across two arguably distinct eras.

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To be included in the GTD, incidents have to meet a combination of several criteria,

including intentionality, the use or threat of violence (including property violence and sabotage),

political, religious, or social motivations, an intent to coerce local or state officials, or the

deliberate targeting of civilians and/or non-combatants (START, 2011). However, the GTD does

not record violence by state forces against opposition forces or civilians and therefore may

provide only an incomplete presentation of the geography of terroristic violence within an

individual state. With these criteria and limitations in mind, the GTD yielded 5,355 incidents

within India from 1970 through 2010 with incidents coded as occurring either within rural areas

or within urban areas at the level of a District (an administrative unit below that of States and

Union Territories in India). This represents a robust longitudinal set of data with enough

geographic specificity for the examination of our key questions.

First, we drew on the rural/urban coding of incidents to consider the overall geography of

terrorism in India within the urban hierarchy. For instance, the GTD codes 75% of all incidents

from 1970 to 2010 as occurring within urban settings, which is defined by India’s census as

inhabited places with 5,000 residents or settled areas with a population density of 400 people per

square kilometer (Ministry of Home Affairs, 2011). At first glance, such an overwhelmingly

urban geography of terrorism could be seen as support for the Jurgensmeyer’s cosmic war thesis

(2000) as we have hypothesized that the geography of religious extremism would likely be

focused on cities. However, grouping the data using Rapoport’s typologies suggests that this

geography is dynamic over time but in a way that complicates the cosmic war thesis. From 1970

to 1989, the GTD codes only 7% of all incidents as rural while from 1990 on, 29% are coded as

rural (see Table 1). While the geography of terrorism is clearly dynamic across Rapoport’s third

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and fourth waves, the trend is precisely opposite of what we might expect from a cosmic

motivation. Terrorism in India has become more rural over time rather than more urban.

All Incidents        (1970‐2010) 

Third Wave         (1970‐1990) 

Fourth Wave       (1991‐2010) 

   Rural  Urban  Rural  Urban  Rural  Urban 

Incidents  24.8%  75.2%  6.8%  93.2%  29.4%  70.6% 

Fatalities/Event  2.57  2.42  2.60  2.49  2.56  2.40 

Table 1. The geography of terrorism in India has become more rural during Rapoport’s fourth wave while the lethality of terrorism has remained largely unchanged over time.

Second, this dynamic geography of incidents also confounded our expectations of the

cosmic war thesis when we considered the average lethality of incidents in the GTD. Based on

fatality data present in the GTD, we calculated the mean number of fatalities per incident in both

rural and urban settings. As shown in Table 1, the mean number of fatalities per incident was

slightly higher among rural incidents than urban incidents in both time periods (1970-1989 and

1990-2010). Further, the mean lethality of incidents has declined overtime, whether rural or

urban. Put plainly, terrorism in India was slightly more deadly outside cities in either era, but has

become less deadly in the era of religiously motivated violence.

Finally, we considered the overall geographic distribution of incidents within India based

on the expectation that religiously-motivated violence would have a broader geographic

expression than would secular terrorism. By mapping the percentage of the total number of

incidents by state/union territory in each period, the overall geography of terrorism was largely

unchanged (Figure 2). Indeed in both periods, terrorism was focused within disputed areas

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associated with partition and the creation of India and Pakistan/Bangladesh; specifically Jammu

and Kashmir and Punjab states in the northwest and Assam, Bihar, and West Bengal states in the

east. Notably, terrorism was less common in the second period in Delhi state (the national

capital) and more common in Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand states. Both outcomes are related to

the expansion of the Naxalite movement, as terroristic violence by various Naxalite groups

spread to these largely rural states in the second period. Rather than religiously-motivated groups

being responsible for a broader geography, the expansion of terrorism within India had to do

with a deepening secular resistance.

Figure 2. Counter to the expectations of cosmic war, terrorism has become more rural in India during Rapoport’s wave of religious terrorism, as rural states like Chhattisargh and Jharkhand have seen significant increases in attacks.

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In sum, we found little in the changing geography of terrorism within India that is

consistent with the expectations drawn from the ‘cosmic war’ thesis. We theorized that a shift

toward religious motivations for terrorism would produce a shifting geography of terrorism that

was more urban in form and more violent. We also theorized that in a ‘wave’ of religious

terrorism attacks would be less focused on historically-disputed territory or places that represent

centralized state authority. Despite our expectations, we found that terrorism became more rural

rather than more urban and no more violent that it had been previously, while remaining

concentrated in disputed areas.

5. Religious Terrorism as Geopolitical Representation

As our analysis shows, the changing geography of terrorism within India raises questions

about the validity of the cosmic war thesis and the associated claims that terrorism is now

motivated by issues beyond earthly politics. We recognize that a study of India does not allow

for universal claims. Rather, our case study is suggestive that the claims to a “cosmic war” need

to be tempered and that more analysis of the actual changing pattern of terrorism is necessary to

interrogate the motivations underlying contemporary terrorism. Claims to a new “cosmic war”

suggest that terrorist groups now seek to inflict the maximum number of casualties to bring about

a period of final judgment for mankind and to communicate with the broadest audience possible.

We have hypothesized that such new motivations will also necessarily produce new geographies,

with terrorism shifting to population centers in search of more victims and more witnesses. By

considering the case of India, a state with a long history of terroristic violence associated with

both secular and religious issues, we have indeed uncovered new geographies of terrorism.

However, counter to our expectations, terrorism within India has become less urban and less

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deadly over time while simultaneously concentrating over time within areas associated with

long-standing territorial disputes.

Because our findings are based on terrorism data, one possible explanation for this

unexpected result may be the nature of terrorism data itself. Because terrorism is a subjective and

contested phenomena, there is a potential for large sample, cross-sectional datasets (such as the

one we have used) to be biased geographically. The GTD, like most similar terrorism databases,

are largely created from media reports of incidents and attacks. Reporting agencies and news

organizations may bias coverage toward large urban areas, especially if an attack produces no

fatalities. The sum effect of such geographic bias could be to depress the reporting of rural

incidents, particularly in the early years of the dataset which covers Rapoport’s secular third

wave.

Given that we partially base our findings on the increasing of percentage of rural

incidents between the third and fourth waves, we assessed how many additional unreported third

wave rural incidents would be necessary to present the same rural/urban proportion as observed

in the fourth wave. To reach the same proportion of rural incidents as found in the fourth wave,

there would have to be over four unreported rural incidents for every reported rural incident

during the third wave. This is the level of underreporting required to produce an unchanged

geography of terrorism between Rapoport’s secular (third) and religious (fourth) waves.

Accordingly, far more underreporting would be required to produce a geography where terrorism

matched the expectations of the cosmic war thesis by shifting into urban areas and population

centers. Bias toward urban incidents may indeed be present but such a markedly high level of

underreporting seems unlikely.

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What then can we attribute this counter-intuitive geography of terrorism to? For this, we

return to our argument about geopolitical practice and representation. By focusing on the

material geography of terroristic attacks in India we have revealed the geopolitical practices of

intrastate terrorism during eras with presumably differing motivations. These practices give no

indication of the pursuit of “cosmic war” (Jurgensmeyer 2000) in India. Rather, we may see the

rhetoric of religious terrorism as part of the geopolitical representation of the use of terroristic

violence. By connecting the use of violence against civilians or non-combatants to larger

struggles of good versus evil, the leadership of groups can attempt to portray their actions as

necessary and just to both internal and external audiences. Further, this kind of representation is

connected to the process of demonizing one’s opposition, a process that Jurgensmeyer (2000:

171-178) himself argues is a necessary step in engaging in organized violence of all stripes.

There is a need for further analysis to see if such conclusions find support in other parts of the

world.

Despite the adoption of the language of cosmic war to represent the necessity and

justness of violent struggle, the practices of terrorism in our example suggest far more earthly

concerns. As we described earlier, a key point regarding Jurgensmeyer’s notion of cosmic war is

the assumption that evil cannot be negotiated with and must be destroyed. This assumption, in

combination with the desire to communicate to a mass audience, is thought to lead to a lack of

restraint in the use of violence. In other words, religious terrorism is not about creating

opportunities to force state elites to negotiate settlements that create new political geographies on

the ground. That is an earthly outcome and presumably of no interest to those who see their

cause as an “all-or-nothing struggle against whom [they are] determined to destroy”

(Jurgensmeyer, 2000: 148). And yet, the geographies of terrorism we have uncovered in India

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suggest a persistent concern with more terrestrial motivations. For instance, the high levels of

violence in the main areas of partition (Punjab and Bengal) are artifacts of the creation of

geographical arrangements that have been seen as persistent sources of social injustice. And

while violence in these areas is indeed connected to religion, the Punjabi and Bengali partitions

were primarily attempts to create new political geographies to resolve long-standing communal

clashes between Hindus and Muslims (and to a lesser extent Sikhs) during decolonization. In

other words, issues associated with religiously-motivated nationalism did not lead to a geography

of cosmic war. Instead, it led to a geography that appears little changed from the previous waves

of terrorism in which the construction of new geographic arrangements was dominant.

By concerning ourselves with more than what terrorist groups say, we believe we have

exposed what may actually be fundamentally new in Rapoport’s (2001) wave of religious

terrorism and Jurgensmeyer’s (2000) era of cosmic war. What could be new about contemporary

terrorism is the set of geopolitical representations that have adopted the rhetoric of religious

symbolism to justify and moralize the use of violence in ongoing conflicts. And just as terroristic

violence is one tactic among many available to geopolitical actors, the geopolitical

representations of conflicts often shift over time and can be quite disconnected to actual

practices. This disconnect can occur as geopolitical elites search for effective ways to motivate

their rank and file to continue the struggle, counter the representations of their opposition, and

influence external parties. As such, it is possible that contemporary terrorism has actually

changed little over time as it is still concerned with political geographic altruism and the

construction of terrestrial political geographies aimed at redressing perceived injustices and

grievances (Flint, 2011); even in a state like India where representations that draw on religious

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arguments regarding good and evil might resonate due to the presence of religiously-defined

communal conflicts.

The rush to find something new about terrorism after the attacks of September 11, 2001

has led to an imbalanced understanding in the terrorism literature that has overly emphasized the

religious themes in the geopolitical representations of terrorism. A more balanced and sensible

approach is one that considers geopolitical practices as well. Given the persistence of groups that

employ terrorism as a tactic and of the earthly issues that motivate them, terrorism scholars

would do well to consider both representation and practice. Doing so is an ideal way to consider

what’s fundamentally new the next time terrorism seems to reshape the very essence of

international security.

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