On the contrary, Islamic terrorists seek to die as martyrs, and to cause maximum pain and suffering to the "Infidels" until they surrender to their barbaric ideology. Their ambitions are not financial or territorial. For example, Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda terrorists did not seek any materialistic gains after September the 11th. Just causing pain to the US and seeking the honor of conducting jihad for Allah and dying as a martyr was sufficient for them to do the attack. The same principle applies to the Palestinian terrorist groups and the Iranian Mullah regime who have repeatedly expressed their religiously based-desire to annihilate all Jews - irrespective of the issue of the land.

In the case of dealing with an enemy who wants to commit a crime or declare a war, it is usually feasible to negotiate with such an enemy as his ambitions are typically focused on tangible things. Negotiations that can result in giving this enemy some satisfaction in achieving some of his worldly desires may be successful in ending the problem. Furthermore, the enemy in these circumstances will be more likely to surrender if he is going to die and will certainly hesitate to use WMD if his opponent is ready to use them against him as well.

On the contrary, the Jihadists cannot be satisfied by giving them some materialistic gains as their target is subjugating others to their ideology as Aiman Al-Zawaheri stated clearly that Al-Qaeda will stop terrorism if the US converted or surrendered to Islam. Furthermore, Jihadists are unlikely to surrender even if their decision will result in their annihilation or will cause a total destruction for their nation. Additionally, the Jihadists and ideologically motivated Islamists will not hesitate a second if they can use a WMD against their opponent as they evidently do not care for human life including the lives of their own Muslim people. Indeed, they will be happy to die in jihad for the cause of Allah.

At the tactical level, Islamic Radicals tend to predominantly target civilians rather than combatants - unlike in traditional warfare where combatants take great care to reduce collateral damages.

It is worthwhile to point out that religiously-motivated terrorist acts conducted by some radical Christians against doctors who perform abortions iare limited in their numbers and targets compared to the global nature of Islamic terrorism. Moreover, unlike Islamic terrorism, the demands of conventional terrorist groups such as ETA and the Tamil Tigers are limited only to regional geographical areas and could be solvable via negotiations as their objectives are to achieve some political gains rather than to die for their cause and to cause pain for the "unbelievers". Similarly, unlike Jihadism-based violence, individually conducted crimes usually lack the ideological thread that can transform them into a global phenomenon that threatens the world security at a large scale.

This complex situation necessitates that we should look at the phenomenon of Islamic Terrorism as a completely different phenomenon that has different dynamics and new rules of engagement. It is different from ordinary crimes, from conventional and from traditional warfare.  Developing novel approaches to deal with this phenomenon including legislative ones is mandatory as classical approaches in dealing with it as a crime, as conventional terrorism, or as a traditional war may not be enough to deal effectively with it. The phenomenon of Islamist Terrorism certainly has some elements of all of the former violent acts; however, it also has many features that make it un-classifiable under any one of them.  A new approach is needed that treats Islamic Radicalism as a separate entity or a distinct type of violence as it does not fully fit under traditional categories of violent acts.