A book published in 2012 predicted the motive for the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing. Terrorist's Creed, by professor Roger Griffin, explains how revolutionary religious movements construct a motive for terrorism against the United States and the West.
Griffin, a world-renowned expert on totalitarian thought and the connections among political fanaticism, violence, and religion, highlighted Chechnya in his study that explains how young men are radicalized into a zealous form of Islam. Carefully avoiding stereotyping Islam or Muslims around the world, Griffin zeros in on the powerful allure of revolutionary "Islamism" in mapping a course toward terrorism.
The Tsarnaev brothers, suspects in the terrorist act in Boston, are ethnically Chechnyan with parents and other relatives in the Russian Republic of Dagestan.
Chechnya and Dagestan are in the northern region of the Caucus mountains that link Russia to the neighboring countries of Iran and Afghanistan, Griffin discusses the historic "protracted struggle" of Chechnya against the forces of "Tsarist Russia" and how "an idiosyncratic form of Islam blending Sufism with pagan traditions served as an ethnic marker for the Chechens in their Caucasian homeland."
Over time, Chechnya went through a process of Islamization, and eventually "Sufi missionaries finally succeeded in transforming Chechens into practising Muslims in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries," according to Griffin.
The role of apocalypticism in the Boston bombing is clearly outlined in the video favored by the late Tamerlan Tsarnaev, "The Black Flags from Khorasan," which details a prophecy which tells of a massive army of non-Arab Muslims marching on Jerusalem to prepare the way for the return of the Mahdi, the figure in Islamic apocalyptic narrative who signals the end of time and the global triumph of Islam.
Khorasan is the name of a historic region south of the Caucuses, and it's role in apocalyptic prophecy within Islamism is promoted by al Qaeda. Some analysts claim that this prophecy helped al Qaeda recruit young Muslims to fight in Afghanistan, first against the Russians, and later Americans.
A chapter by Griffin is titled "Rethinking What We Read in the Newspapers About Terrorism." Griffin argues that the "widespread misunderstandings of the metapolitical causes of terrorism, and the role that religion, particularly Islamism, may play in them has had important consequences for its coverage in the media."
The role of apocalypticism in the Boston bombing is clearly outlined in the video favored by the late Tamerlan Tsarnaev, “The Black Flags from Khorasan,” which details a prophecy which tells of a massive army of non-Arab Muslims marching on Jerusalem to prepare the way for the return of the Mahdi, the figure in Islamic apocalyptic narrative who signals the end of time and the global triumph of Islam.
Khorasan is the name of a historic region south of the Caucuses, and it's role in apocalyptic prophecy within Islamism is promoted by al Qaeda. Some analysts claim that this prophecy helped al Qaeda recruit young Muslims to fight in Afghanistan, first against the Russians, and later Americans.
A chapter by Griffin is titled "Rethinking What We Read in the Newspapers About Terrorism." Griffin argues that the "widespread misunderstandings of the metapolitical causes of terrorism, and the role that religion, particularly Islamism, may play in them has had important consequences for its coverage in the media."
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