I love the introduction to What Makes a Terrorist?, by James Q. Wilson:
Until the nineteenth century, religion was usually the only acceptable justification of terror. It is not hard to understand why: religion gives its true believers an account of the good life and a way of recognizing evil; if you believe that evil in the form of wrong beliefs and mistaken customs weakens or corrupts a life ordained by God, you are under a profound obligation to combat that evil. If you enjoy the companionship of like-minded believers, combating that evil can require that you commit violent, even suicidal, acts.
I remember being completely perplexed by the notion of Thuggee cultists the first time I read about them. Ninjas made perfect sense (to my 11-year-old self), but Thugs made none:
The Thuggees of India during their several centuries of existence may have killed by slow strangulation 1 million people as sacrifices to the Hindu goddess Kali. The Thugs had no political objective and, when caught, looked forward to their execution as a quick route to paradise.
I’m not sure that most people realize that the term “assassin” comes from a radical Islamic cult known for its dramatic, suicidal attacks on public leaders. I don’t think they’d be surprised, but I don’t think they know the origin of the term:
In the Muslim world, one kind of terrorism, assassination, has existed since shortly after the death of the prophet Muhammad. Of his early successors, three were killed with daggers. The very word ?assassin? comes from a group founded by Hasan Ibn al-Sabbah, whose devotees, starting in the eleventh century, spread terror throughout the Muslim world until they were virtually exterminated two centuries later. They killed rival Sunni Muslims, probably in large numbers. Perhaps one-third of all Muslim caliphs have been killed.The Assassins were perhaps the world?s first terrorists in two senses. They did not seek simply to change rulers through murder but to replace a social system by changing an allegedly corrupt Sunni regime into a supposedly ideal Shiite one. Moreover, the Assassins attacked using only daggers, in ways that made their capture and execution, often after gruesome torture, inevitable. Murder was an act of piety, and as Bernard Lewis has suggested, surviving such a mission was often viewed as shameful.
Perhaps one-third of all Muslim caliphs have been killed.