On the troublesome relationship of feminism and terrorism: representing the female terrorist in contemporary art

This paper analyses tendencies in debates about cultural representations of terrorism to assume that artists make critical interventions, while the mass media circulates stereotypes. Some recent feminist analyses of female terrorist acts have re-instituted essentialist arguments in which violence and terrorism is described as inherently masculine, while women are by nature pacifist, so that femininity is the antithesis of militarism. More progressive analyses mostly tend to expose the circulation of stereotypes and their gender bias, in order to protest the misrepresentation of women in violence. These analyses do not construct alternative accounts. Through an analysis of two works by artists Hito Steyerl and Sharon Hayes, the paper argues that some of the moves to re-image the question of women, violence and agency have already been made in contemporary art practices. Through analysing legacies of terrorism and feminism, it becomes possible to rethink the question of agency, militancy and the nature of political art. The paper appears in an edited interdiscplinary collection arising from a conference at Universität der Bundeswehr in Munich. It relates to wider projects involving collaborations with Birkbeck and Edinburgh on representations of terrorism and on violence and contemporary art.

Here come the Salafis: the framing of Al-Qaeda's ideology within terrorism research

The purpose of the paper is to analyse different narratives about al Qaeda (AQ) in Terrorism Studies, and to demonstrate the methodological and empirical problems associated with them. It demonstrates that AQ as it emerges within Terrorism Studies is more of an artefact of preconceived notions about fundamentalist ideology than the result of rigid empirical research.

Evolving social networks, attitudes and beliefs and counter terrorism

'The Princeton Companion to Applied Mathematics' is an introduction to applied mathematics for students, teachers, and professionals. This article is for the "Application Areas" part of the book, which comprises articles on connections between applied mathematics and other disciplines.

Terrorism and cabinet duration

Terrorism can strengthen or weaken electoral support for ruling governments. We show in a simple model of coalition formation that, regardless of the direction of a public opinion shock, the impact of terrorism on cabinet duration is ambiguous. However, in an analysis of a data set including 2,400 cabinets in over 150 countries in the period 1970–2002, we find that terrorism, on average, shortens cabinet duration. This result is robust for a range of alternative terror measures and is present in both democratic as well as autocratic political regimes.

Does terrorism threaten human rights? Evidence from panel data

Using panel data for 111 countries over the period 1982–2002, we employ two indexes that cover a wide range of human rights to empirically analyze whether and to what extent terrorism affects human rights. According to our results,terrorism significantly, but not dramatically, diminishes governments’ respect for basic human rights such as the absence of extrajudicial killings, political imprisonment, and torture. The result is robust to how we measure terrorist attacks, to the method of estimation, and to the choice of countries in our sample. However, we find no effect of terrorism on empowerment rights.

Islamic mutual funds' financial performance and international investment style: evidence from 20 countries

We pursue the first large-scale investigation of a strongly growing mutual fund type: Islamic funds. Based on an unexplored, survivorship bias-adjusted data set, we analyse the financial performance and investment style of 265 Islamic equity funds from 20 countries. As Islamic funds often have diverse investment regions, we develop a (conditional) three-level Carhart model to simultaneously control for exposure to different national, regional and global equity markets and investment styles. Consistent with recent evidence for conventional funds, we find Islamic funds to display superior learning in more developed Islamic financial markets. While Islamic funds from these markets are competitive to international equity benchmarks, funds from especially Western nations with less Islamic assets tend to significantly underperform. Islamic funds’ investment style is somewhat tilted towards growth stocks. Funds from predominantly Muslim economies also show a clear small cap preference. These results are consistent over time and robust to time varying market exposures and capital market restrictions.

International terrorism, domestic political instability, and the escalation effect

What are the main causes of international terrorism? Despite the meticulous examination of various candidate explanations, existing estimates still diverge in sign, size, and significance. This article puts forward a novel explanation and supporting evidence. We argue that domestic political instability provides the learning environment needed to successfully execute international terror attacks. Using a yearly panel of 123 countries over 1973–2003, we find that the occurrence of civil wars increases fatalities and the number of international terrorist acts by 45%. These results hold for alternative indicators of political instability, estimators, subsamples, subperiods, and accounting for competing explanations.

Terrorism and electoral accountability: one strike, you're out!

We examine the relationship between terrorism and electoral accountability. We find that terror has a robust positive effect on the probability that the incumbent government is replaced. The magnitude of the effect increases with the severity of the terrorist attack.

Spiritual capital: the co-evolution of an ethical framework based on Abrahamic religious values in the Islamic tradition

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to investigate how values from within Abrahamic religions could be adopted to improve liberal market economies’ (LMEs’) corporate governance business practices. Design/methodology/approach – The concept of spiritual capitalism is explained from an Islamic perspective by adopting three universal Abrahamic values to critically analyse LMEs and offer an ethical alternative to current capitalism concerns. Findings – It is found that LMEs can be improved by considering all stakeholders, putting ethics before economics, and introducing shared risk/reward plus lower debt. Originality/value – The paper compares LMEs/Co-ordinated market economies (CMEs)/Islamic countries economies (ICEs) within an ethical framework for LMEs.

Reply to Christine Sylvester, “Terro rWars: Boston Iraq”: An examination of differences between counter-terrorism and war as seen through the Iraqi experience of occupation

This response examines what is overlooked in Sylvester’s analysis of similarities between the US police security response to the Boston marathon bombings (2013) and Kevin Powers’ fictionalized account of the US war operations in Al Tafar, Iraq (2004) and evaluates the consequences for our understanding of contemporary war. This is done by highlighting differences between the experience of residents in Boston and the (real) town of Tal Afar, key among them the insecurity, fear and calamity that result from the distinct political realities in these locations. The experience of war from the perspective of the victims adds an important dimension to the debate over the changing nature of war. At a time that is marked by an unprecedented level of technologization and visual mediation, it brings into focus the fragmentary and often one-sided evidence on which our knowledge of contemporary war is based. It reminds us to ask not only what we know about war, but how we know it.