© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/15685276-12341492 Numen 63 (2015) 141–164 brill.com/nu Challenging the Curious Erasure of Religion from the Study of Religious Terrorism Lorne L. Dawson Department of Sociology and Legal Studies, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, ON, Canada N2L 3G1 ldawson@uwaterloo.ca Abstract The role that religion plays in the motivation of “religious terrorism” is the subject of much ongoing dispute, even in the case of jihadist groups. Some scholars, for differing reasons, deny that it has any role; others acknowledge the religious character of jihad- ism in particular, but subtlety discount the role of religion, while favoring other expla- nations for this form of terrorism. Extending an argument begun elsewhere (Dawson 2014, 2017), this article delineates and criticizes the influence of a normative religious bias, on the one hand, and a normative secular bias, on the other hand, on scholarship addressing the relationship between religiosity and terrorism. I examine two illustra- tive studies to demonstrate the complexity of the conceptual issues at stake: Karen Armstrong’s best-selling book Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014) and a recent article by Bart Schuurman and John G. Horgan on the rationales for ter- rorist violence in homegrown jihadist groups (2016). Keywords religious terrorism – jihadism – terrorist motivations – explaining terrorism When anyone says Allahu Akbar today,1 whether under their breath or shouted aloud, it evokes fear and suspicion — at least in the non-Muslim West. The Arabic phrase is now the universally recognized battle cry of jihadi terrorists. 1  Allahu Akbar is a traditional Islamic phrase, called the Takbir in Arabic, that is commonly used in prayers and as a call to the faithful; it means “God is Greater” or “God is [the] greatest.” NU_065_02-03_03-Dawson.indd 141 23/01/2018 6:04:54 PM