An interactive map of Islamist terrorist attacks in the world In forty years, Islamist terrorist attacks have multiplied, reaching as far as the heart of Western countries, New York, Madrid, London, Paris, but also Moscow, etc. By instilling feelings of fear and mistrust, through indiscriminate violence and its repetition, Islamist terrorism fuels or reinforces the demands for authoritarianism and closure that are increasing in democracies. But have we measured the reality of this violence that worries us so much?
We may also know that in Europe France is the most affected country. We can see that Islamist violence strikes more often, even harder, outside the Western world.
But we cannot say that we know how to evaluate Islamist violence in this way. Since spring , we have been working to quantify Islamist terrorism, to identify the forms it has taken over these decades, to classify the acts it may have inspired or initiated, to estimate the number of its victims, to identify the most deadly organisations and the most affected countries.
To do this, we collected a very large amount of information, to the point of building a large database. It is available in open data on our website data. We believe that the mass of information gathered sheds new light on the phenomenon of Islamist violence. It makes it possible to better describe it, to better understand it, to document its severity. Thus, by way of illustration, we can establish that between and , at least 33, Islamist terrorist attacks took place worldwide.
They caused the deaths of at least , people. We can also say that Islamist terrorist attacks account for We identify and quantify operating methods and targets. The vision of the phenomenon improves, the image becomes clearer. In this way, we show that the majority of the victims of Islamist terrorism are Muslims The information gathered is unprecedented.
We hope that its content and use will contribute to the knowledge and quality of the debate as well as public decision.
An interactive map of these attacks is available on fondapol. The issues. Democracies under pressure - a global survey - volume II. On 3 October , an attack took place on the premises of the Paris Police Headquarters. During a knife attack, three Police officers and an administrative agent were murdered. The murderer was shot dead.
However, according to the rules that governed the conduct of our work, we cannot retain in the verified information of our database on Islamist violence the attack itself nor the number of its victims seeing as we do not have the conclusions of the investigation at the time we are completing this study. No, it is the entire nation that must unite, mobilise and act. We will only win if our country, which has overcome so many challenges in history, rises up to fight against this underlying Islamism that corrupts the children of France.
A society of vigilance is what we must build. Vigilance, not suspicion that corrupts. Vigilance: attentive listening to others, reasonable awakening of consciences. The figure of the hydra indicates a reappearing danger when we thought we could overcome it. Whatever the conclusions of the investigation into the motivations of the killer of 3 October , the observation of the facts proves the President of the Republic right on this point, as the results of our research show.
It was in the United States, less than 20 years ago, on 11 September , that the deadliest series of attacks in the history of terrorism took place, leaving behind 3, dead and 16, wounded 3. However, it is outside the Western world that countries have suffered Islamist violence more often and much more severely. Gilles Kepel, Expansion and decline of Islamism , 2nd ed. We asked ourselves whether it was possible to truly know the extent of Islamist violence in the world, to make a database of it and to share the results with interested audiences in the form of a database accompanied by this study.
To carry out such work, it was necessary first to determine the starting point of the database, to identify the most reliable sources, examine and validate them, then process the data collected, present the main lessons learned and, lastly, make the information collected available to the public.
We decided to start collecting data from onwards. This year was chosen by most specialists because it reflects the historical failure of Arab nationalism competing with the movements of Islamisation and the affirmation of jihadism 4. That same year, a number of events precipitated this development: the Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan, the Iranian revolution, the signing of the Camp David agreements and the hostage-taking of the Great Mosque of Mecca by a group of Islamist fundamentalists in November-December 5.
At the Islamic level, its function is also to divert radical militants around the world from the struggle against the American Great Satan — to which Khomeini incites them — and to channel them against the USSR.
Afghan jihad has a cardinal importance in the evolution of the Islamist movement around the world. It became the ultimate cause, with which all militants, moderate or radical, identify themselves. It supersedes, in the Arab imagination, the Palestinian cause and symbolises the transition from nationalism to Islamism.
According to this definition, acts of State terrorism are not included in our database. Like many concepts, terrorism is subject to controversial definitions. This definition is extended to the enumeration of a set of characteristics specifying the nature of the terrorist act:. Our contribution focuses specifically on terrorist acts carried out by organisations or individuals claiming to be Islamists.
It is considered essential to our database and focuses on attacks that have been the subject of an Islamist claim or about which the available information indicates that it has been planned, decided and carried out in the name of Islamism. Edward W. The same authors consider that Islamism has many analogies with the Muslim Brotherhood movement There are many other definitions of Islamism, often very detailed.
Militant Islamism, then, is any form of Islamism that advocates the use of violence to achieve Islamist objectives. Acknowledging that there are no universally accepted definitions of Islamism and terrorism, some researchers characterise it as an ideology whose key tenets include:. On 28 April , the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag published a list of Islamist terrorist attacks. This list covers a shorter period, from 11 September to 28 April Until , the data are extracted from the Global Terrorism For the years and , the newspaper constructed its own database.
Thus, in addition to attacks by the best-known groups, we also take into account attacks by individuals or small groups claiming to be Islamists without belonging to a particularly well- known organisation. The Global Terrorism Database does not provide any information for Since October , the year is available on the GTD.
We did not have the opportunity to compare them with our own data for these two years and , especially since the GTD is now subject to a more restrictive licensing system. It is within the framework of these definitions that we have conceived this work and that we propose here the result in the form of a database listing the Islamist terrorist attacks perpetrated in the world since 27 December The data included in our database does not extend beyond 31 August , given the time required to validate and process the information collected.
Indeed, while the attacks in Western countries have considerable visibility, due to the greater impact that violence can have in more peaceful societies, their ability to produce reliable data quickly and a particularly dense media presence, the same cannot be said for attacks that take place, much more often, in other parts of the world where all identification and intelligence processes become longer but cannot be as effective.
Therefore, the validation and classification of relevant events requires work that goes beyond the time we had to define in order to make this publication possible. To carry out our research, we used three types of sources: the collection of information on attacks since via search engines, the cross-referencing of existing databases and academic research.
There are indeed various databases on terrorist attacks in general and Islamist attacks in particular All the databases in circulation were useful to us in confirming or enriching the work we were completing However, most of the databases available are very incomplete or unevenly documented. In some cases, information may be abundant about a country, region, year or period, usually very short, then very little or non-existent for another year or country.
This can be seen on Wikipedia, where data by year or theme are available but very incomplete, fragmented and in a form that does not allow statistical processing. This gigantic database compiles terrorist attacks between and The value of this set is to identify terrorist attacks regardless of their motivation. This abundance was also the main challenge for us, since we had to extract Islamist attacks from the , attacks recorded worldwide from to We therefore carried out a selection, verification and classification of the data contained in the GTD.
We then had to supplement it with our own information, particularly for the year We worked without the GTD for the years and since data for these years were not provided It is clearly impossible to claim to propose an exhaustive database of Islamist terrorist attacks committed in the world between and , for a number of reasons detailed below.
No matter the efforts made, it is certain that a significant number of attacks falling under the Islamist category could not be recorded, either over the entire period concerned or for the years , and Islamist terrorism takes place in singular and complex contexts that some- times make it difficult to collect reliable data.
This is particularly the case in situations of war, civil or international, independentist or separatist struggles and territorial conflicts that persist over long periods of time, where causalities are shifting or inextricable, as in the case of the Palestinian conflict, while in a completely different context, in Thailand for example, a separatist movement has led a Muslim minority to get involved with weapons in the name of objectives that can achieve, beyond political demands, a religious dimension.
Available data do not always allow news agencies to attribute the attack to the Islamist cause, especially if the country affected by the attack is characterised by weak administrative structures. The absence of claim of responsability can increase the likelihood that an attack will not even be recorded by agencies or that this information will not reach the press.
However, it is certainly significant. Since victims who succumb to their injuries after an attack are almost never mentioned in the available information, it is impossible to know their exact number. It is therefore also impossible to integrate these deaths into our database in a reliable way.
Thus, according to our database, we record at least , deaths and , people wounded, which is less than the number of deaths. This information leads us to believe that the number of people wounded is much higher than that in our database. Certainly, developing countries, which are the countries where most attacks take place, do not have the same capacity to identify and care for people injured in an attack.
Some of the injured are probably not even counted, while others die from their injuries after a certain period of time due to the inadequacy or fragility of relief systems and health institutions. If we applied the ratios of the three sample attacks to the number of casualties in our database , , we would have to adjust this figure by multiplying it by three , or five times away , In all cases, the number of victims, dead or injured, is significantly lower than a reality that cannot be more precisely known.
We have recorded 33, Islamist attacks that killed at least , people between and The years and have the least amount of information provided. For , we counted 1, Islamist terrorist attacks 8, deaths and, for the period between 1 January and 31 August , Islamist attacks 4, deaths.
The lower number of attacks in and compared to previous years, although still significant, does not mean a decrease in Islamist violence but results from the state of our database, which has to be consolidated. However, the considerable volume of our data allows for a simple extrapolation exercise which is to replace the information collected for the years and with an annual mean of Islamist terrorist attacks and the number of their victims.
If we calculate these averages using the most recent years, those corresponding to the cycle, we obtain an average annual number of 1, attacks causing the deaths of 8, people. Assigned to and , these two results make it possible to estimate the number of Islamist terrorist attacks and their victims for the period Our research began in the spring of The study we are publishing here is based on the database we have developed, available as open data on data.
In the following analyses, we first present the evolution of Islamist terrorism from to the present day; second, we propose an interpretation of the data according to the regions of the world and the countries affected by Islamist violence.
The accuracy of the figures does not imply such a detailed knowledge of the observed reality; the degree of accuracy results from the calculation operations applied to the database. We could only reproduce the exact result of these operations. Explore the interactive map. This work does not aim to shed light on the foundations of Islamism or to discuss the origins and justifications, in the context of Islam, of the use of violence and violence of a terrorist nature in particular.
In a different way, we consider that our contribution lies in the information that can be obtained from the exploitation of a consolidated database and the analyses to which it can give rise. However, in order to understand the value of the data shared here, it is necessary to briefly recall the developments in Islamist terrorism since Islamist organisations are firmly contained or severely repressed, as Nasser did in Egypt with the Muslim Brotherhood.
At the end of the s, the Islamist claim was strengthened 1. The increase in social inequalities and corruption of the elites were denounced.
Islamist movements were trying to embody a political alternative to existing dictatorships or are engaging in violent actions, as in Syria, where the Muslim Brotherhood launched an armed struggle against the Baathist regime of Hafez el-Assad. These movements of Islamisation in Middle Eastern societies flourished all the more as Arab nationalism began to falter then collapsed. At the end of the decade, in , a window of opportunity opened up for Islamists in the Middle East and North Africa.
The year was a pivotal year, the scene of several important events, including the Iranian revolution and the invasion of Afghanistan by the USSR. The Russian military operation precipitated the emergence of a new Islamism. At the same time, in Iran, the opposition led by the Shiite clergy, due to the context of intense social protest, forced the Shah to flee the country 16 January On 1 February , Ruhollah Khomeyni came to power.
In the wake of the Iranian revolution, Shia groups advocating armed struggle were formed. Among them is the Lebanese Hezbollah, created in Shia ideology is affirmed in the context of the process of Islamisation of the Middle East where it competes with Sunni legitimacy. In Afghanistan, the Soviet invasion initiates the conflict which will be considered the matrix of contemporary Islamist terrorism 2.
Jihad is supported by Saudi Arabia, Algeria and Egypt. With attacks, which cost the lives of 1, people, the s are the least deadly years compared to the decades that followed. From to , there were 69 attacks on Syrian territory, representing nearly two-thirds Attacks ceased after the repression of the Muslim Brotherhood movement, including during the Hama massacres by the Syrian army in From to , the country most affected by Islamist terrorism is Lebanon, with attacks, which caused at least deaths.
In the grips of a civil war since , the country has been experiencing the rise of small terrorist groups. A year later, the Shia organisation triggered a series of attacks on foreign institutions.
An Italian patrol was hit on 15 March , although no lives were lost, but on 18 April a new attack hit the United States Embassy in Beirut, resulting in the deaths of 63 people. At the end of the same year, on 23 October, an American base and a French patrol were terribly hit by an attack in which people lost their lives.
In all, by integrating the other affected countries, Hezbollah is responsible for attacks from to , kil- ling 1, people. In September , Paris suffered a series of six attacks, including the one on 17 September, rue de Rennes, in front of a store, which killed 7 people and injured These attacks were claimed by the Solidarity Committee with Arab political prisoners and the Near East, on behalf of the Lebanese Hezbollah.
The Lebanese organisation is also considered responsible for the two attacks on the Israeli Embassy on 17 March in Buenos Aires 30 dead, wounded , as well as the attack of 18 July on a Jewish association, also in Buenos Aires 85 dead, injured.
Over the whole period, Argentina remains the only country in South America affected by Islamist terrorism, with three attacks. The globalisation of the jihadist struggle began then. British politicians generally are not given police protection when they meet with their constituents. Flags were lowered to half-mast in Westminster as tributes poured in from across the political spectrum for Amess. Dozens of local community members honored their slain elected representative in an impromptu mass held at another Leigh-on-Sea church near the crime scene on Friday evening.
Amess had been a member of Parliament for Southend West, which includes Leigh-on-Sea, since , and had been a lawmaker since , making him one of the longest-serving politicians in the House of Commons.
A social conservative on the right of his party, he was a well-liked figure with a reputation for working hard for his constituents and campaigning ceaselessly to have Southend declared a city. In Streetwise Hebrew for the Times of Israel Community, each month we learn several colloquial Hebrew phrases around a common theme. These are bite-size audio Hebrew classes that we think you'll really enjoy. This month, we're learning phrases on the topic of strength and power. Inclusion could also help people with a death wish, of course, but reclaiming the false narrative of martyrdom as an acceptable recourse for personal or societal grievances may prove to be more potent.
One promising example is the refusal of Muslim imams to perform traditional prayers for the deceased perpetrators of the recent London Bridge attack.
Making such practices mainstream could evaporate the ambiguity around the idea of a holy death and deter otherwise justifiable suicide attacks. Equally — and perhaps more crucial — is for Muslim imams and clerics to preach greater moderation, acceptance and compassion, towards ourselves as well as others.
Terrorism is a tactic, and we are wise to recognize that we cannot wage war against it. Instead, we need to focus on the social and emotional reasons for extremist behaviour. We need a human-centred approach, one that starts from within. The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum. Studies show that people placing a high value on their own happiness can lead to less happiness, as they are disappointed when they expect to feel happy.
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