Explaining religious terrorism: A data-mined analysis

Nilay Saiya and Anthony Scime
Additional contact information
Nilay Saiya: State University of New York at Brockport, USA
Anthony Scime: State University of New York at Brockport, USA

Conflict Management and Peace Science, 2015, vol. 32, issue 5, 487-512

Abstract: What is the relationship between religious liberty and faith-based terrorism? The wider literature on freedom and terrorism has failed to reach a conclusive verdict: some hold that restricting civil liberties is necessary to prevent acts of terrorism; others find that respecting such rights undermines support for terrorist groups, thus making terrorism less likely. This article moves the debate on liberty and terrorism forward by looking specifically at terrorism motivated by a religious imperative and a country’s level of religious liberty—something not attempted in previous studies. Using classification data mining, we test a unique dataset on religious terrorism in order to discover the characteristics that contribute to a country experiencing religiously motivated terrorism. The analysis finds that religious terrorism is indeed a product of a dearth of religious liberty. The study concludes by discussing the implications of these findings for policy-makers.

Keywords: Data mining; religious liberty; religious terrorism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0738894214559667 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:compsc:v:32:y:2015:i:5:p:487-512

DOI: 10.1177/0738894214559667

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Conflict Management and Peace Science from Peace Science Society (International)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().