Religion, Terrorism and Weapons of Mass Destruction: Expediters or Hindrances for Global Peace (original) (raw)
Related papers
Chemchemi International Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, 2020
There is no doubt that terrorism is a peculiar and serious threat to global peace, security and by extension human well-being. Despite concerted military efforts by governments that have borne the brunt of its attacks, suppressing let alone elimination of terrorism has remained elusive. This limited success that has been achieved by seemingly targeting the terrorist per se implies that the root cause may not have been identified. While terror attacks have been done by people of various political and religious persuasions, the frequencies with which perpetrators appear to directly or indirectly invoke the great religion of Islam is worrying. Accordingly, it is this paper’s hypothesis that the root cause of terrorism particularly the kind meted in non-Muslims is inherent in the religious doctrine that the terrorists have embraced. Therefore, independent global research agenda needs to focus on this dimension in order to prove or dispel the above hypothesis. This paper makes reference ...
Religion and Terrorism: A Socio-Historical Re-Consideration
Journal of Alternative Perspectives in the Social …, 2010
Terrorist activities have taken a new turn in the wake of 21st Century, thereby creating a sense of insecurity in the global family, The reason for the upsurge of terrorism has also remained an enigma. However, scholars have posited diverse reasons and motivations for terrorist activities. Scholars mostly of western orientation, blame religion for it. On the other hand, scholars with liberal inclinations place the blame on the socio-political exigencies that fosters authoritarianism as the sole cause of the social phenomenon. The third group of scholars posits eclectic sources of terrorism. They opine that though, socio-political exigencies are at the root, however, religion fans the ember and gives it legitimacy. The fourth group proposed an alternative model in which they subsumed that globalization and not religion is the purveyor of modern terrorism. They noted that globalization agenda depersonalizes culture, breaks traditional identities, nullify national sovereignty and violates human rights and life of those at the fringes of development. Thus, those affected adversely by the scheme resort to terrorism as retaliation for the violation done to them. Religion, on the one hand, occupying a central position in human life becomes a medium of translating this sociopolitical conflict into a moral one. It is by religion that secular conflict acquires a cosmic nature. Any conflict understood in cosmic terms acquires stateless and timeless status and as such become unending. Therefore, the paper surmises that terrorism will not end unless globalization ends.
RELIGION_AND_TERRORISM_IDENTIFYING_THE_RELATIONSHIP.pdf
Abstract Religion has very often been identified as enhancing terrorism and world religions have in history not objectively distanced themselves from terrorist related acts. This paper explores the definition and concept of religion and identifies that with its communal and manipulating dimensions religion has the instruments that can easily be used to enhance terrorism. With its conflicting texts it is possible to interpret certain religious texts as favouring violence and other precepts as calling for peace. But interpreted integrally within its hermeneutical context even the texts that are sympathetic towards violence may not imply violence. It concludes that from the point of view of its orientation and goal, religion promotes “The Good” and is therefore not responsible for terrorism and must not be seen and used to encourage violence. It recommends an engagement between governments and religious leaders on the promotion of the moderate side of every religion in a given State.
Islamism and Terrorism - How Religion may Cause War.
The 2014 'War on Terror' in Afghanistan has been defined by Jane's Defence Weekly as "the struggle to suppress radical Sunni Islamists who seek to re-establish a transnational caliphate by using violence" 1 . This heavy military operation in South-West Asia by NATO troops intended to defeat the Taliban and ultimately leads to the critical question of whether the world has become a safer place? More precisely, this brings forward questions of whether that kind of multinational military commitment will be repeated in the near future. The change in warfare and military commitment by the International Community over the last thirteen years at the Hindu Kusch signals a new trend in many areas all over the world. -Regional limited asymmetric armed conflicts, the so called 'new wars', have become an immense threat to global security within the last two decades. The reason this has happened mainly in countries like Sudan, Zimbabwe, Somalia or Afghanistan has national and regional roots. Nationalism and poverty, hunger and migration, corruption and religious fanaticism are just a couple of the trigger causes for those new dynamics. 2 This paper aims to examine one of those; the relationship between Islam and terrorism.
Violent Terrorism in the Name of Religion pdf
2012
Many Muslims complain that the current news media focus on the proliferation of Islamic terrorist groups in the Middle East and other parts of the world unfairly portrays Islam as a religion that condones the use of terrorism. Given the fact that throughout human history conflicting religious beliefs have often been used by adherents of all of the world’s major religious faiths as a rationale for the use of terrorism, there may be some justification for these complaints. Therefore, this essay will review literature and research published from1984 to 2005, which analyzes religiously inspired violence and terrorism by Buddhist, Christian, Hindu and Jewish as well as Islamic extremists. It is hoped that a broader and deeper understanding of the root causes of various different types of pseudo-religious political terrorism might open the door to more constructive dialogues between religious and political leaders of all religious faiths on ways to reduce religiously inspired violent terrorism. It should also be noted that although many books and articles have been written about religiously inspired Islamic terrorism in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, three of the works reviewed here, which examine religiously inspired terrorist attacks attributed to all of the world’s major religions, were published prior to 2001.
Challenges of Religion and Terrorism
Abstract The end of the Cold War, ended the segregation into two ideological camps, but opened the way to new problems. Once the West had not an enemy to be a risk and push to be unified, they should find other ways to keep the united. Imposition of secular state and religion embodied regions, sparked reactions against the secular state, thus creating Occidentalism enemies. We have a clash of cultures or civilizations, that Huntington draw attention to the revival of religion in most of the World, is reinforces cultural differences. Freedom action, has raised and created religious fundamentalisms reclaiming to certain religious roots, and try to disseminate as much in the World to their religion, and their faith radical, potentially could collided religions that we have review and concluded as extreme (Pentecostal, Protestant Evangelicals, Orthodox, Takfir and Salafiyyah Islam). Secular nationalism went wrong, by the categorical religion completely from traditional cultures, and the tendency to create “parochial identities” submit to “the march of history” that fundamentalist groups claim, or even self-funded Orthodox Russia. And the tendency to realize its goals, leads to religious terrorism. Keywords: Terrorism, Fundamentalism, religion, world with religiously, the clash of religions.
The popular media and many in academia often overstate the role that religion, and its supposedly unique qualities, has played in recent acts of terror. In this article, I argue that the notion of religious violence is unhelpful and that there is a more useful concept that we can utilize to draw out the values and ideas that play a role in the move to violence in both religious and secular groups. From a series of case studies on religious and non-religious groups, I have drawn out an alternative framework for investigating and learning from the role that beliefs play in motivations and justifications for terrorism. This framework uses the concept of non-negotiable (or ''sacred'') beliefs. It is as applicable to secular as it is to religious groups, and can show us much more about how such beliefs can contribute to violence.
RELIGION AND TERRORISM – REFUTE, DON'T JUST DENY
It seems a common occurrence in today's world that whenever an attack occurs which has all the hallmarks of a terrorist attack, be it from a far right wing Christian lone wolf type attack, a suicide bombing by an Islamic extremist, through to a Muslim village being attacked by Buddhists in Bangladesh, there is an almost deafening response of`not our religion`. However, at the same time, proponents of other religions or no religion are quick to point out that these attacks are part of the other religions makeup, so that we have non-Muslims, condemning Islam as the religion of the Sword, and on the occurrence of an attack such as the recent shootings at an abortion clinic, outrage when the attackers are identified as lone wolf attackers rather than Christians by the Islamic community. One only needs to look at the actions of Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot to answer any smugness from the atheist community about religious violence. I feel that I must add at this point that I have a strong Christian conviction and have also condemned these attacks as not being of my faith without considering their viewpoint. A quick look at all religions will show a history of violence which needs to be looked at both from a contextual and historical viewpoint and this is what needs to be discussed and explained. This article aims to show that of the world's major religions, all have passages which relate to violence, and which, are used today as the claims for action for various groups throughout the world. It will then concentrate on one religion being Islam which is currently receiving the most attention and then further reducing this to look at four major elements of terrorist attack to discuss its illegality, being authorization to conduct attacks, suicide bombing, home-grown terrorism and perfidy. It is only by showing that the verses that they utilise for their actions are taken out of historical or normative context can we show that there is no basis for their activities and show their actions to be no different to a political terrorist organization or transnational criminal organization. This article will look at the specific Qur'anic surah's and hadiths and show through the works of scholars such as Niaz Shah, Shayk Muhammad Al-Yaqoubi, Muhammad afifi al-akiti and Rashad Ali, how these texts have been deliberately misinterpreted to give some pretence of legitimacy to the actions of such groups as Al-Quada, Jemaah Islamiyah and ISIS. The intent is to show that it is time that instead of just stating that religious claimed terrorist attacks are 'not of our religion' but instead, refute their claims of following 201105219Contemporary Terrorism Studies and the Causes of Terrorism 30206word: 3064 1 | Page
THE ROLE OF RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISM IN TERRORIST VIOLENCE
The paper explores some of the religious ideas used in terrorist rethoric; it does not argue that religion is a direct cause of terrorism, but mentions how some religious ideas are used by terrorist groups to further their own agenda. (Essay written in 2013)