Cultural explanations of terrorism erase political and historical differences among perpetrators

Evidence

Where the explanation for violence lies in culture, political details are irrelevant. Hassan Almrei’s ‘jihad’ cannot differ from Bin Laden’s if the phenomenon being described is very simply the bad Muslim who possesses a deep rage and hatred towards the West. In the same vein, we need not consider Islamic extremism as anything but an unchanging essence likely to erupt at any moment into violence. — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 125

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Saïd’s critique of Orientalism and to the flattening of Arab identities the reader has encountered in political-science literature. — connects to: Historical foreign interventions forged an Iranian victimhood that shapes distrust — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized:…, 1744