The question of whether the terrorist attacks of September 11th could have been prevented with proper detection techniques still plagues modern law enforcement. Often, the question of terrorist profiling focuses on racial or ethnic stereotypes rather than particular sociological or psychological profiles endemic to fundamentalist or nationalist terrorists. However, law enforcement must face the fact that not all Muslims, Palestinians, or Arabs are terrorists, and thus additional factors must be necessary to create the necessary conditions to foster terrorism within a community. Why do some individuals decide to become terrorists? Do terrorists share common psychological traits? Is there a terrorist personality? Can a terrorist profile reliably help security personnel to identify terrorists? (Hudson, 1999, p.14) If these questions regarding the contributing factors that give rise to a terrorist psychology could be answered, law enforcement will have an additional, valuable tool in detection.
             Foreign terrorist groups tend to fall under one of the following four typologies: nationalist-separatist, religious fundamentalist, new religious, or social revolutionary. (Hudson, 1999, p.18) Thus the early manifestations of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which included both Christians and Muslims fighting for an independent Palestine via terrorist actions against Israel and its supporters, would be considered a nationalist group, in contrast to the fundamentalists of the Islamic group Al-Qaida or revolutionary left-wing Marxist terrorists.
             It has been noted that permissive environmental factors, combined with situational factors can make terrorist strategies especially attractive to political dissidents. Environmental factors include urbanization, an improved transportation system that can allow a terrorist escape to another country, improved access to communications media like cell phones and the Internet, weapons availabil...