CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2014
| Author | Radosits, Magdolna |
|---|---|
| Title | Nationalist traits within Al-Qaeda: debunking the motivations behind religious terrorism |
| Summary | Throughout my thesis I argued that the Ummah, a conscious and interconnected body of Muslims can possess a certain type of national consciousness that enables them to act defensively to the oppressive nature of foreign occupation and meddling with internal policies in the Middle East. In order to investigate the topic I used several thematic clusters to bolster up the argument. First of all, I cross referenced those ideas in the vast literature of nationalism that can resonate with my assumption, namely that nationalism as a sense of loyalty and emotion doesn’t necessarily require a state – in the modern sense – in order to be applicable. Then I moved on to the issue of Arab nationalism and the reasoning that corroborates the validity of the Ummah seen as a nation and a source of loyalty and belonging. To round up the other end of the proposition, I scrutinized the main theories of terrorism studies that examine the motivations of terrorists in order to be able to decide upon the alleged discrepancy according to which, nor poverty, nor social inequalities nor any other assumed root cause can verify entirely the deeds of terrorist organization other than the ones with political grievances and a wounded sense of dignity either by oppressive governments or occupying foreign troops. As a conclusion, we can propose that this line of thinking may open up a different approach to interpret and explain the motivation and root causes of Al-Qaeda terrorism. |
| Supervisor | Andras L. Pap |
| Department | Nationalism Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2014/radosits_magdolna.pdf |
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