This thesis reviews the literature on “new terrorism,” to be differentiated from the “old terrorism.” The study tests two hypotheses. First, has an increase in religiously inspired terrorist groups led to an increase in terrorism's lethality? Second, does suicide bombing as a tactic explain the increased lethality of “new terrorism”? The study demonstrates three findings. First, it was found that religiously inspired terrorist groups are more lethal, though not more indiscriminate. Second, that suicide bombing has had a significant effect on the number of terrorist related fatalities. And, third, that non-religious suicide bombing is more lethal than its religious counterpart. To test these hypotheses I used Ordinary Least Squares Regression and data provided by The International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism.

Although terrorism is an area that has been the subject of much research, systematic searches in databases reveal that a focus on actors and movements that find their motivation in Christian beliefs, is, by and large, lacking. Ever since the 9/11 terrorist attack, Islamist terrorism has been the major focus. The purpose of this thesis is to describe and compare Christian and Islamist acts of terrorism. This will be done by using the terrorist attack of the self-proclaimed Christian crusader Anders Behring Breivik in Norway 2011 and compare it to the terrorist attack in Paris November 2015 claimed by the terrorist organisation Islamic State (IS). A content analysis is used to explore the material. The analysis is conducted with an analytical framework created from previous research on religious terrorism to explore the similarities and differences of religiously motivated terrorist acts. The study reveals that there are a lot of similarities between Breivik and the Paris attackers. Both Breivik and IS strived to change society with violence justified by their religion. In a type of “God´s executioner” fashion. A final conclusion in this thesis is that Breivik and IS share Ideological core ideas in the form of exclusivity, however, the exclusivity is expressed differently. Breivik´s exclusiveness is linked to ethnicity and skin colour, while IS´s exclusivity is solely linked to faith.

The purpose for undertaking this case study of the Shi'a in Lebanon is threefold. First, as a hypothesis-generating case study, its objective is to formulate relevant hypotheses about religious resurgence and religious terrorism. This study achieves this objective by formulating 14 general and nine special hypotheses, and testing and confirming the latter. Second, the purpose of this study is also to explore the trajectory of the Lebanese Shi'a's sectarian mobilization. This exploration permits the conceptualization of geocultural immobility and its effect upon a religious minority. It deduces that the Lebanese Shiga's geo-cultural immobility is directly related to their active religious resurgence. The third purpose is to study the changes in the objectives and tactics of a religious minority, that of the Muslim Shi'a in Lebanon. This research is able, via its primary and secondary data, to show a relationship between the Lebanese Shiga's religious resurgence and their use of religious terrorism. This study introduces the concept of geo-cultural immobility. A minority's geo-cultural immobility is identified as an imposed low geographic mobility within a nation with low cultural pluralism. It establishes the Lebanese Shi'a's geo-cultural immobility, to which it attributes their religious resurgence. This Lebanese Shi'a religious resurgence is proven in this research to produce zealots needed by religious terrorist organizations. This study also introduces and defines religious terrorism as violent acts performed by elements of a religious organization or sect, growing out of a commitment to communicate a divine message. It distinguishes between religious terrorism, secular terrorism, and fighters for religious freedom, which are based on the actors' motives, affinities, and consciousness of the maliciousness of their acts. The primary and secondary data and the quasi-experiment in this research support its special hypotheses. They indicate a statistical correlation between eight Lebanese Shi'a cultural and religious attributes: (1) age, (2) marital status, (3) extent of Shi'a Imam's militancy, (4) personal religious commitment and religious resurgence, (5) zealotry, (6) geo-cultural immobility, (7) imprisonment of family members, and (8) willingness to commit terrorism.