Naylor's Wages of Crime and Al Qaeda Financing Critique
This paper critically evaluates R.T. Naylor's Chapter Seven of Wages of Crime, which addresses terrorist financing and the viability of financial counterterrorism measures against al Qaeda. The analysis engages Naylor's core arguments — that tracing terrorist financing is ineffective and politically inappropriate — against scholarly counterpoints from Basile, Clunan, Freeman, Jacobson, and Zdanowicz. While acknowledging that Naylor correctly identifies the complexity of global terrorist financial networks and the limitations of current policy, the paper argues that Naylor's conclusions are logically flawed, politically biased, and ultimately counterproductive. The paper ultimately contends that attacking terrorist financing remains one of the most essential, if underutilized, tools in the broader counterterrorism strategy.
- Introduction: Naylor's Rogue Interpretation: Overview of Naylor's contrarian framework on terrorist financing
- Al Qaeda's Financing Structure and Naylor's Concessions: Where Naylor agrees with mainstream analysis on al Qaeda
- Tracking Global Financial Networks and the Role of the Internet: Internet's role in enabling and tracking terrorist finance
- Logical Flaws in Naylor's Conclusions: Why Naylor's counterterrorism conclusions are illogical
- Alternative Approaches to Counterterrorism Finance: Scholarly alternatives advocating stronger financial coordination
- Naylor's Political Biases and Their Impact on His Analysis: How Naylor's political views undermine his academic credibility
- Conclusion: The Continuing Importance of Targeting Terrorist Financing: Reasserting financial interdiction as essential counterterrorism strategy
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper demonstrates strong critical engagement with a primary text (Naylor's Wages of Crime), systematically identifying both valid premises and logical fallacies rather than offering a blanket rejection or endorsement.
- Multiple scholarly sources are marshaled to contextualize and challenge Naylor's conclusions, giving the critique academic grounding beyond mere opinion.
- The author maintains a balanced tone by conceding Naylor's valid points before dismantling his conclusions, which strengthens the overall argument's credibility.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper exemplifies source synthesis and evaluative critique — a skill central to graduate-level analysis. Rather than summarizing Naylor's chapter, the author compares it against multiple peer-reviewed studies (Basile, Freeman, Clunan, Jacobson, Zdanowicz) to expose where Naylor's logic diverges from scholarly consensus and why those divergences matter for real counterterrorism policy.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens by framing Naylor's overall thesis and methodological stance, then narrows to Chapter Seven specifically. It proceeds through a series of thematic critiques — financial complexity, internet-enabled financing, logical fallacies, political bias — interwoven with supporting scholarly citations. Each paragraph either extends or rebuts a specific Naylor claim. The conclusion returns to the broader policy question, affirming that financial counterterrorism remains indispensable despite Naylor's objections.
Introduction: Naylor's Rogue Interpretation
R.T. Naylor offers a unique — and some might say even rogue — interpretation of bin Laden and al Qaeda. While Naylor spends the entirety of Wages of Crime focusing on the flows of black market and blood money, he does so within a morally relativist framework. Chapter Seven of Wages of Crime is an addendum, new to the most recent edition of the book, which was originally published prior to September 11. Responding to the pressing push to apply the economist's approach to terrorist financing, Naylor understandably adds this chapter as part of his ongoing narrative on the wages of crime.
Given the tenor and themes contained in the rest of the book, it comes as little surprise that Naylor reaches the conclusion that cutting off sources of terrorist financing is an unfeasible, ineffective, and perhaps even morally inappropriate method of addressing the problem of non-state actors. In an interview with Standard Schaefer for the alternative publication Counter Punch, Naylor clarifies some of his statements in Wages of Crime, inadvertently revealing the logically fallacious reasoning used in Chapter Seven. For example, Naylor employs a false equivalency argument to claim that the United States is unfairly targeting Muslim charities with suspected ties to terrorist organizations like al Qaeda, and that it should also be targeting Jewish, Hindu, and Christian charitable organizations for the same reasons. These types of arguments do Naylor's credibility a disservice, ultimately demonstrating why Chapter Seven is one of the weakest sections of Wages of Crime.
References
Basile, M. (2010). Going to the source. Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 27(3), 169–185.
Clunan, A. L. (2006). The fight against terrorist financing. Political Science Quarterly, 121(4), 569–596.
Freeman, M. (2010). The sources of terrorist financing: Theory and typology. Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 34(6), 461–475.
Jacobson, M. (2009). Terrorist financing and the internet. Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 33(4), 353–363.
Naylor, R. T. (2004). Wages of crime.
Schaefer, S. (2003). The wages of terror: An interview with R. T. Naylor. Counter Punch. https://www.counterpunch.org/2003/06/20/the-wages-of-terror-an-interview-with-r-t-naylor/
Zdanowicz, J. S. (2004). Detecting money laundering and terrorist financing via data mining. Communications of the ACM, 47(5).
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