Culture or Conflict? Escalation toward Terrorism

Abstract

Conflicts arise and, no matter what they are about, turn violent if there are no institutions within which they can be carried out by other means. Such unregulated conflicts intensify the process of establishing unambiguous identities, which appear to safeguard personal integrity and dignity. Therefore, terrorism is not the expression of a specific culture (be it Basque, Irish, Tamil, Chechen, Hutu, or Saudi), it is primarily a means of extreme political struggle, following the construction of dichotomies like friend and foe, good and evil.