Terrorism and Religion
The topic opens itself to a labyrinthine web that is too difficult to entangle but I’ll try to take a stab at it. First off, I’m of the opinion that anyone who says that terrorism is undone with religion is, in fact, undone with insouciance about the matter at hand. It is only one factor in the gamut of causes; it is a very vital factor at that but not the most pertinent:
POLITICAL TERROR AND TERRORISM
93 percent of all terrorist attacks occurred in countries with violent political terror. Less than one percent occurred in countries where there was no political terror.
To analyze the link between levels of political terror and terrorism carried out by non-state actors, the GTI was compared to the Political Terror Scale (PTS). The PTS is measured using a 1 to 5 scale, with 1 representing ‘no political imprisonment’ and 5 representing ‘unrestrained political terror waged against the whole of population’.
To explore the link between political terror and terrorism IEP has analyzed the location of all terrorist attacks in the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) in which at least one person was killed between 1989 and 2014. The locations of these 44,553 attacks were then compared to the Political Terror Scale. The figure shows that between 1989 and 2015, 93 percent of all terrorist attacks occurred in countries with violent political terror. Less than one percent occurred in countries where there was no political terror as measured by political imprisonment.
THE LINK BETWEEN ONGOING CONFLICT & TERRORISM
Fifty percent of all terrorist attacks between 1989 and 2014 occurred in countries with internal conflict while 41 percent occurred in countries involved in internationalized conflicts. Terrorism occurs outside of conflict or high levels of political terror only 0.5 percent of the time.
But all this does not discount the role religion plays:
REGION
Terrorism is largely centralized in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa regions, which together account for 84 percent of attacks and 95 percent of deaths.
It seems to be highly localized.
The number of deaths is also maximum in these localized areas:
DEATHS FROM TERRORISM BY COUNTRY 2015
EXTREMISM AND ISLAM
Extremism is not tied to Islam in its essence, or at least in the light of these polls, I’d like to qualify my assertion.
Most Americans are worried about Islamic extremism, and most Muslim Americans share these concerns.
Roughly eight-in-ten U.S. Muslims (84%) say such tactics can rarely (8%) or never (76%) be justified. The share of Muslims who say such tactics can often or sometimes be justified (12%) is similar to the share saying this among the general public (14%). And Muslims are more likely than the public as a whole to say that targeting civilians for political, social or religious causes can never be justified.
One can argue that separatist movements are nationalist and not religious in nature. If one scratches the surface, any group clamoring for separatism AND resorting to extremism has roots in religious ideology. However, I also believe that it is only a percentage of people who endorse religious extremism perhaps due to the intolerant environment they were raised in. No one is “born” an extremist, but if they live and breathe in an environment that glorifies extremism, then that becomes their way of life.
Sources: