Religous Terrorism or Politcal Struggle

Bernardo Revelo

Blog

PSCI 371

3/19/15

Religious Terrorism or Political Struggle

            When someone says the word terrorist, the next word is usually Muslim, Al- Qaeda, or Isis. We hear those words so much that we don’t really stop to think about it when a news reporter reads a head line that usually goes something like this: Another Isis attack leaves a number of individuals beheaded after reciting a section of the Quran. Then we go on to judge the Muslims for the actions of a few, even though 90% of Muslims are not okay with it. But are the actions of these terrorist groups truly religious or just political? When you look at the past, people tend to use religion as a justification for their actions so are terrorist doing the same? If so, what is the government doing wrong to encourage or making these people want to revolt and commit terroristic threats and why are we so afraid of a Muslim attack?

            Muslim, ISIS, Islam, and religious extremist are all terms that you constantly hear on the news when you turn your TV on or when you check news stations online, but why is this religion and group of people targeted so much? Is it because they are the only group of people that commit terroristic threats, or is it because we, as a nation, fear the Muslim religion? Since 9/11 when the Islamic terrorist group al-Qaeda, crashed two airplanes into the twin towers, these specific groups of people tend to get tons of attention from the media when terrorist groups strike. Although this do this date does not give justification to the 90 percent of the religion that is not okay with what happened on that date. Although many people believe terrorism to be religious, there are people out there, like myself that believe is it more political than anything.   The definition for a terroristic threat according to the FIB is any act “To intimidate or coerce a civilian population; to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coerce; or to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping” (FBI.gov).

            Terrorism has been used by many people from the Iris Republican Army in the 1920’s to Chechnya, Dagestan, and Al-Qaeda in the 2000’s and ISIS being the most current. All four of these groups were/are trying to gain independence of some sort. The IRA wanted Irish Independence from Britain; Chechnya and Dagestan want independence from Russia, Al-Qaeda wanted to get rid of all outside influences in Islamic states and ISIS is a group of people that are trying to create a state in the Iraq and Syria area so that they can be independent as well. None of these groups have any religious reasons on why to commit terroristic threats, so why are their actions said to be religious? I believe that terrorist organizations use religion to justify their actions. This is if you say that God or Allah told them to commit a terroristic threat and you commit in the name of your god and religion nothing can stop you because you would have that belief that God/Allah sent you to commit the act.

This also happened in the past with the past with the Spanish Inquisition in the fourteenth century. During this time Spain had a large number of Jewish people that were wealthy and prosperous. The king did not like the fact that there were so many Jewish in his country so he made them convert. Although the Jewish were converting into Christians, they were still hated because they continued to be extremely prosperous, so the king and the rest of Spain started to persecute them. Using the catholic faith so justify their actions, the Spanish said that they were not real Christians and that they killed Jesus Christ.(Britannica.com) That justification made it okay for the Spanish to persecute them because it was not about the money. It was done in the name of Jesus Christ.   Without that justification people would have not been okay with killing of the innocent Jews because it is immoral to kill people because of their prosperity. Although the Spanish inquisition happened in the past, in a way, the same thing is happening with terrorist in the present. If you have read the news lately you will notice the justification because at least once a week you will see that ISIS or another Islamic terrorist group has beheaded a group of individuals in the name of Islam or the Quran. This justification allows them to kill people without remorse for their actions because their God tells them to do so since all other religions are wrong (Ayaan Hirsi Ali). Although according to Donovan, the base of almost every religion is “to control the undisciplined mind that harbors selfishness and other roots of trouble, and each teaches a path leading to a spiritual state that is peaceful, disciple, ethical and wise.”(Peter Donovan). Although if this was true, society would be perfect and there would be no such thing as terrorism.

            If religion is just used to justify their actions, then what is the actual reason that terrorist commit these threats? In the case of the IRA, Chechnya, and Dagestan they used their terroristic actions to get attention and spread their cause for independence; ISIS, in a way, does the same thing because by using religious reasoning to be killing people, they get justification and publicity. Everybody knows who ISIS is because of their actions. David Gibson, writer of “does religion cause Terrorism” points out that all the attention and power that certain terroristic organizations carry with them has a kind of effect on younger people, the same effect that gangs  have of kids that makes them want to join. Once in the organization, it has a kind of “Prozac effect” this effect causes the members of the organization to want to do anything for the gang. This is why people are so willing to kill or be killed for that organization. If you combine the “Prozac effect” that you get from being a part of one of these organizations with the religious justification, these groups are pretty much unstoppable because they are willing to do anything, especially because they believe that God/Allah is with them.

            If the “Prozac effect” is used to increase the size of the organization, religion is used to justify their actions, and most terroristic organizations have a political agenda whether it is independence or a religious war. The last thing to think about is what is the Islamic reason for using terrorism? If you look at a map, and see were most the Muslim population is located, it is located in the Middle East area and Northern Africa. In this area of the    world, there is neither a strict government, like a dictatorship, or a real loose government, like a democracy. All the governments are intermediate, which actually leads to people being less content with their government according to Carlos Lazada. This actually leads to more terroristic  threats within those countries(1,536 ) than abroad(240) because people are not content with the government they  have, according to research done by the national bureau of economic research. This is because they have a choice in their government but at the same time they don’t because it usually rigged so that people with money are always in charge wins. Along with that there is a lot of corruption within the government with 84 percent of the countries having more then 50 percent corruption (transperency.org). This leads to the people revolting in the way of terrorism. If the government were more like dictatorships, the people it would be extremely hard for the people to revolt because the dictator controls every aspect of the people lives. If they tried to revolt the government would put the revolt down with military force, but in the middle east, since everything is so split and they have this intermediate government the people have that option to revolt.

            Surprisingly, the wealth of a country also does not have to do with terrorism. I listened some of the countries that I often hear talked about when people talk about terrorism and how much income per capita they have a year. As you can tell, although some countries are not rich for example: Iran they are not extremely poor.

Money earned per capita according to Prb.org

Afgansitan	$2,000
Iran	$15,600
Iraq	$15,220
Pakistan	$4,920
Sudan	$2,370

This goes to show that, not all countries with terrorist organizations in them are extremely poor and money doesn’t have to do much with terrorist. Although like we have seen in class, as well as different studies have shown the amount of income per capita impacts how religious the state you live in is. For example: countries in Africa are some of the poorest in the world, yet they consider themselves more religious. On the other hand are countries such as Japan that are well developed, yet they don’t consider themselves very religious. Although  this shows that money doesn’t have to do a lot with the amount of terrorism in a country, a lot of the terroristic countries fall under poor or less developed countries that consider themselves very religious.

            Thus far in this paper I have been focusing on Islamic terrorism, not because I believe that all terrorist are Islamic or Muslim, but because if you look at any news site, that is the most occurring theme. Muslim terrorists this and Muslim terrorist that, but how many times do you hear the US media talk about Christian terrorism or Buddhist terrorism? I feel, like the the media focuses on Muslim because is produces rating because Americans fear that religion. Not because of the religion itself but because its something new to us; Although this does not give justice to the religion as a whole, you cant judge 90% of a religion based of the actions of the other ten percent. If this was the cased we as a nation are terrorist also because there are Christian in African prosecuting Muslims and other religions because they are impure (Kassim Kayira). We see people talking about this kind of terrorism at restaurants or cafes, why? Is it because we don’t want to think of Christians as terrorist since we live in a “Christian Nation” or because we justify it since we are Christians and they are just doing it because it is what our god told them to do.   

            Whether terrorism is religious or political, it is something that we have a hard time wrapping our head around because as a secular nation we try to separate our church and government (Karen Armstrong). We were the first nation to do such a thing because we started fresh, we saw that the mixture of church and state in Europe didn’t work out so well so one of the first things that they colonist did was create a separation; but how do you do that in countries that have had religion and politics intertwined for so long? The answer is you cannot entwine them without causing massive destruction in the culture and religion itself. This is why terrorist are able to say that they do it for their religion when it is political at the same time.

            Religion can serve as many things, justification, inner peace, or a road to eternal life. Depending on what your belief systems are but to say that you kill people for your religion is going to a different extreme that many people, including myself don’t understand because that is the opposite of what religion is to me. That is why I believe that terrorist don’t commit acts based on their religion, they commit them for some form of political reasoning. Whether it is freedom, independence, or power only the people that commit this act are the ones that truly know their reasoning.