Attempting to identify terrorist organizations as religious cults or
religious cults as terrorist organizations is a challenging task for
several reasons. Both the definition of cult and the definition of
terrorism are hotly contested and thus their combination is
unsurprisingly exponentially more so. Why is this the case?
Definitions of both cults and terrorism are based on subjective lists of
characteristics, rather than undisputed definitions. Thus a terrorist
is someone who employs terrorism - and terrorism is defined according
to certain characteristics of an act often (but not always) including
the target of the attack, the social position of the attacker, the
intention of the attacker, etc. A cult is also defined by
characteristics including (sometimes) a particular structure of
leadership, conditions of the followers, and elements of an ideology.
Both “terrorism” and “cult” are pejorative words and their use often
indicates as much about their user as those they seek to define.
Accordingly, when one attempts to identify a terrorist organization as
religious cult, or vice versa, he finds himself in very murky waters.
Therefore, this article will consider less the definitions of either
term and more the characteristics of both. Using a matrix of
attributes, this article will classify existing organizations into a
spectrum of religious cults and terrorism and identify common conditions
that are present when particular cults engage in acts of terrorism.
http://www.trackingterrorism.org/article/religious-all-and-cult-terrorist-groups
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