It's a question of motivation : what makes different terrorists different and its significance for counterterrorism.

Abstract

Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), a clandestine Islamist group based in Indonesia, is notorious because of its involvements in a number of high-profile terrorist attacks in the region. Taking the group as a special case study, this paper seeks to study motivations for violence. Organisations like JI hardly deserve attempts at rationalising the violent activities of its members but failure to take into account the important myriad of reasons for those who choose to engage in violence makes any analysis on terrorism short of complete. In examining the varied motivations of terrorist militants within JI to take up arms and their personal journeys towards violent radicalisation, this paper will show that as different militants are spurred by different motivations to wage jihad, and as their conceptualisation of jihad accordingly varies, they are necessarily different kinds of terrorists. It is important to understand these differences in order to undertake the appropriate countermeasures to combat terrorism - or else risk fuelling the terrorist cause.