INTRODUCTION

Existing scholarship on terrorism has pointed out various motives underlying violent acts. Notably, Kruglanski, Bélanger, and Gunaratna (2019) argue that such intent could stem from perpetrators’ unfulfilled basic needs, their exposure to violent and extremist narratives since they were young, and the outreach by terrorist networks to them. Additionally, an insightful study by Putra and Sukabdi (2013, p. 84) provides a more region-specific example. Through conducting in-depth interviews with forty religious terror activists in Indonesia, they identified three prevalent motivations for violence: (1) the perception of Indonesia being in a state of war, thus legitimizing defensive actions; (2) the belief in the nobility of suicide bombing; and (3) the view of the West (as a whole) as an invader of Muslim countries and a representative of evil, with the Indonesian government being seen as its corrupt ally.

Mufid et al. contest the notion that poverty and social inequality are the sole drivers of terrorism, positing instead that the confluence of structural factors at the global, national, and subnational levels is what leads to such acts. Based on their study involving 110 terror perpetrators, Mufid et al. suggest that perceived structural factors, such as the West's domination of the global economy and politics, along with its military intervention in Arab countries, provoked the terrorists to act (Mufid et al. in Sukabdi 2021, p. 4). Mufid et al. further classify the terrorists’ motivations into five distinct categories: (1) religious-ideological; (2) solidarity-driven [individuals participate in the acts of terrorism to express sympathy for fellow believers whom they perceive as victims of conflict]; (3) separatist [the terrorist's desire to establish an Islamic state]; (4) “mob mentality” [spontaneous acts of terrorism]; and (5) situational [referring to, for example, individuals convicted of terrorism charges due to associations with others].

This article focuses on the role of ummah solidarity [or Muslim community solidarity], as a motivation for terrorism. According to Mufid et al., 20 per cent of their 110 respondents admitted to engaging in acts of terrorism driven by this sense of community solidarity (Mufid et al. in Sukabdi 2021, p. 4). This motivation is only surpassed by ideological and religious motives, which were cited by 45.5 per cent of respondents. Other motives were: mob mentality (12.7 per cent), revenge-seeking (10.9 per cent), situational (9.1 per cent), and separatism (1.8 per cent).