War, Repression, Terrorism

Jochen Hippler

September 2006

War, Repression, Terrorism
Political Violence and Civilisation in Western and Muslim Societies
A study by Jochen Hippler
Commentaries by Nasr Hamid Abu Zaid and Amr Hamzawy
Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations (IFA)
Stuttgart, Germany, September 2006

Download complete book - PDF [680 KB]

Available also in Arabic [PDF] and German [PDF] from the Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations

Contents

Foreword

War, Repression, Terrorism - Political violence and civilisation in Western and Muslim Societies

Introduction
The bloody 20th century
Violence and history: early examples
New structures of violence: colonialism
State-building and juridification: taming violence within society
Violence and the Modern Age
Interim appraisal
And the Near and Middle East?
Causes and basic structures of political violence
Terrorism as a special form of political violence
Terrorism and suicide attacks
Key example: politics and religion in relation to Osama bin Laden
The religious factor
Wastern legitimation of violence and the "War on Terror"
Common and contrasting problems with political violence

Commentaries

Brutality and Civilisation - Violence and terrorism?
Mechanisms of violence and motives of terrorism from a historical viewpoint
A structural analysis of the mechanisms of violence and the motives of terrorism
The mythological dimension of universal violence

Conclusion

The globalisation of danger and the intricacies of religion, politics and violence
The risk society: the structurality of violence and the universality of the change in value systems
The interconnection of religion, politics and violence in Arab-Islamic societies

The authors

Bibliography

Jochen Hippler

Research fellow at Institute for Development and Peace (INEF, Institut für Entwicklung und Frieden)

Former TNI director (1993-95), Jochen Hippler is a specialist on the Muslim Middle East (mostly Arab countries) and Central Asian politics (mostly Afghanistan and Pakistan).

In addition to his fellowship at the University of Duisburg-Essen (Germany), Hippler is also a consultant working on Cultural Dimensions of Globalization; Inter-cultural Dialogues, and Violent Conflict and War.

His most recent edited volumes are The Democratisation of Disempowerment: The Problem of Democracy in the Third World (Konkret 1994 and TNI/Pluto 1995) and The Next Threat: Western Perceptions of Islam, co-edited with Andrea Lueg (Konkret 1993, TNI/Pluto 1994, updated/expanded second edition in German by Konkret, 2002). Besides working on several book contributions focussing on Middle Eastern problems and military matters, he is currently preparing a book on Nation-Building in the Third World.