Terrorism is an assertion of the will of a very few over the many. It is a protest, an attempt to gain power and influence, and an expression of cultural anger. Timothy McVeigh's terrorism was what he believed to be a military strike by one man against the entire United States government. His terrorism was politically motivated and carried out with a great deal of planning and precision. Mohammed Atta's (and the rest of the 9/11 terrorists) attack was also premeditated, carefully planned, and aimed, we can only suppose, at hurting the United States in a way that only a small group of people can, by attacking civilian targets and doing the greatest amount of damage possible. The kinds of terrorism that have wracked the Middle East, however, have been much less grand in scale than those that have occurred within the borders of the U.S. Palestinian terrorists have been blowing themselves up in crowds of Israelis for decades. Theirs is an expression of protest against the very existence of the Israeli state. Terrorism is, then, a multi-faceted expression of violence against another party. The commonality is that some element of the cultures that generate terrorism makes the act of destroying innocent lives. It is the purpose of this paper to examine how a culture, particularly that found in some areas of the Islamic world, can breed terrorism.
