Many of our discussions about terrorism today revolve around ideologies, with the implicit assumption that it is the ideologies themselves (rather than material, strategic, or psychological considerations) that drive people and groups to resort to terrorism. Indeed, one of the elements of the definition of terrorism is that the motivation for violence must be *political*--in other words, terrorism is almost by definition ideological.

However, consider these two facts: 1) Most ideological extremists never engage in violence, and 2) most terrorists are ideologically illiterate. How can we square these observations with the fact that terrorism is a necessarily ideological act? Is this a weakness of the ideological approach? Why or why not?