Conclusion

This book was about how to understand the financing of terrorism. Its primary aim was to construct an improved approach to conceptualizing, researching, and understanding terrorism-related financial activity for spheres of both thought and practice. Toward this, the book attempted to build on existing research and construct a new conceptual framework that represents a foundation for a more analytical, more nuanced, and more systematic understanding of this high-profile but intrinsically contested and politicized topic. Conceptually, the main thesis the book advanced was that activities typically represented as “terrorist financing” (for example, donations, criminal activities, weapons procurement, and so on) ought to be understood in terms of how “terrorists”—as socio-political actors—access and interact with particular—and often legitimate—political economic communities; rather than as elements of some vast, mysterious, and entirely illicit financial edifice supposedly underpinning global terrorism.