Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

INTRODUCTION • lviitechniques of pure terror that would be used by future generations oftrue believers.The word “assassin” came from another religious-political group.In the 11th and 12th centuries, Isma’ili Shi’ite activists in southwestAsia organized corps of assassins, known as the Fedayeen, literallythe “self-sacrificers.” These assassins were willing to undertake attacksagainst Sunni rulers despite the certainty of their own death orcapture, as they were assured of their place in heaven if they fell asmartyrs fighting in the path of God. To counter the awe and respectthese bold attacks created among the common people, apologists ofthe Abbasid dynasty targeted by the Isma’ilis gave out that the attackerswere really “Hashshishin,” those acting under the influence ofhashish. This official disinformation became the source of the word“assassin.” The car and truck bombers of the 1980s, who blew upthe U.S. embassy in West Beirut and later bombed the U.S. Marinebarracks and French military headquarters, all within one year, reproducedin a modern setting the same tactics used by the earlier Isma’iliFedayeen. This traditional form of terrorism is continuing today inIraq, Israel and the Palestinian territories, South Asia and Sri Lanka,and other strife-torn areas.Other English words have come from the ancient lexicon of terrorism.The term “thug” was taken from the name of a secret sect in Indiathat also employed terrorism as part of its ritual worship of Kali, theHindu goddess associated with death and destruction.Modern terrorism originated during the French Revolution and thereaction that followed it. Under Citizen Robespierre and his Committeeof Public Safety, the “Great Terror” was directed against the realand imagined enemies of the revolution. In excess of 17,000 peoplewere victims of this first exercise of mass state terrorism. It is sad tonote how this figure pales into insignificance when compared with thestatistics of the mass terrorism of modern totalitarian states, which haverefined with murderous efficiency the ability to engage in genocide,whether in the gas chambers of the Third Reich or the killing fields ofKampuchea.Terrorism as an instrument of revolutionary transformation developedmore fully in Imperial Russia. In the Catechism of the Revolutionist,written in 1869, Sergey Nechayev provided an idealized guide thatwould be employed by later generations as the model of a terrorist dedicatedto his or her cause to the death. As he noted in this Catechism,