How to Think About Terrorism

What is terrorism? How do people become terrorists? To what extent can terrorism be considered rational? Quassim Cassam and Richard English tackle these vital questions in How to Think About Terrorism.

How to Think About Terrorism transforms how we understand terrorism, through innovative engagement with philosophical ideas and arguments as they intersect with historical and political thinking. This book reflects on the vital question of definition, recognizing that a useful description of terrorism should be sufficiently flexible and open-ended to accommodate the great variety of terrorist methods, motives, objectives, perpetrators, and targets.

Quassim Cassam and Richard English offer a philosophical (but empirically and historically grounded) account of the differences between non-state terrorism and state terrorism, and of the dynamics and nature of state terrorism itself. The authors address the question of how people become terrorists, combining in a Hybrid View the strengths of generalist and of particularist approaches; and offer a realist middle way between irrationalism and rationalism.

How to Think About Terrorism offers a complex and historically nuanced account of the relationship between religion and terrorism, and reflects systematically on the extent to which terrorism can, in principle, be morally justified. In terms of counter-terrorism, this book argues that philosophical thinking about torture should focus on real rather than artificial scenarios; it also draws together its cumulative argument in an innovative assessment of the moral, political, and practical foundations for a range of counter-terrorist approaches, an analysis intended to be as practically relevant as it is analytically compelling.