Representations of Terror and Resistance: International Perspectives and African Experiences

Abstract

This paper examines the economic and religious motivations for terror in modern Africa and revolutionary France. A comparative paradigm to humanities research is adopted to explain the similarity of factors that precipitated the French Revolution and Boko Haram as institutions of terror. The position of the paper is that economic marginalization and religion are motivators in both instances and that they are intertwined. It realized that religious fanaticism and economic inequality were bedfellows which caused the rise of terror in France during the revolution and Nigeria in the Twenty-first Century. Whereas religion was a cause of bitterness in the match towards the French Revolution, it was an object of good motivation which brought people together towards instigating terror in Nigeria.  Economic need again propelled popular discontent in revolutionary France and Nigeria towards the rise of terror as a tool to resolve national problems and register local discontent against central authority, respectively.