Terror or Terrorism? The “Islamic State” Between State and Nonstate Violence

As a non‐state actor that claims its own territory, the “Islamic State” utilizes a spectrum of very different kinds of coercion and violence. Considering the group's aspirations to govern the territories controlled by it, any clear distinction between uses of force and coercion that states typically claim as their legitimate right, and implement terrorist non‐state violence, tends to blur right before our analytically‐focused eyes. This contribution discusses how the group challenges the distinction between “terror from above” and “terrorism from below” as well as the meaning of the dual character of Daesh's belief system between the ideological and the religious for Daesh's repertoire of violence.