Discourse and Terrorism: Religionization, Politicization and the Incitement of Sectarian Conflicts

This article delves into the diverse aspects of the discourse of terrorist groups in the Middle East. It tackles a poorly investigated area of research, as it strives to provide a better understanding of the specific elements of the discourse of influential terrorist organizations with diverse sectarian affiliations. It contributes to the fields of discourse analysis and terrorism studies by providing new insights into the linguistic and contextual activities, the explicit and implicit messages within the discourse of major terrorist groups. The adopted methodological framework comprises ‘discursive ideologization’ and ‘discursive manipulation’, allowing the exploration of ideological practices, manipulative strategies and propaganda methods. Key features identified within the discourse of the studied organizations include politicization, religionization and sectarianization.