Taking Terrorist Accounts of their Motivations Seriously: An Exploration of the Hermeneutics of Suspicion

The field of terrorism has long suffered from a data deficit, particularly when it comes to primary data derived from interviews with violent extremists. This deficit reflects more than the difficulties of securing such data. For a variety of more subtle and complex reasons, researchers have been reluctant to interview terrorists and suspicious of the information derived from such interviews. As part of a larger study, this article explores the nature and foundations of this situation by systematically examining the limited discussion of the problem in terrorism studies and delineating three underlying interpretive concerns that appear to have interfered with securing more such interviews and trusting the data acquired through them.