Religious and Secular Terrorism: Analyzing Differences and Points of Intersection

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Religious Terrorism: Essence and Justification
Secular Terrorism: Essence and Justification
Religious Terrorism versus Secular Terrorism
Religious Terrorism and Secular Issues
Religious Terrorism and Religion
Case Study: Buddhism and Religious Terrorism
Conclusion
List of References

Introduction

Terrorism is a methodical use of terror, particularly, as a method of compulsion. No unanimously approved, lawfully binding, criminal laws of the explanation of terrorism exist at present. Terrorism is commonly defined according to the violent actions done with the intention of creating fear/terror.

These are committed for religious reasons, political causes, deliberately or in disregard of the protection of civilians. Today terrorism takes different shapes, and it is important to note that not all forms of terrorism are identical, as there are noteworthy disparities between two basic types of terrorist acts, which are religious and secular terrorism.

In this paper, we will compare religious and secular terrorism from the perspective of their origins, aims and manifestations. We will also try to outline the border between religion and religious terrorism and analyze secular motives in religious terrorism. Despite the names of two kinds of terrorism draw a neat border between them, we will see that these two terrorism types have much in common and that these names can be considered somewhat generalizing.

Religious Terrorism: Essence and Justification

“Religious terrorism is terrorism by those whose motivations and aims have a predominant religious character or influence” (Stern, 2003). Religious terrorists find inspiration and justification for their actions in religious scriptures; committing terrorist acts is seen by them as their duty to God, and the acts themselves are viewed as the way to execute the God’s will (Al-Khattar, p.5).

Most of the religiously convicted individuals who indulge themselves in acts of terrorism are always eager to attain a specific desired task. Religious terrorism attacks have been boosted to some extent as a result of technological advancement.

Religious terrorism can be articulated in two ways. The first one is where violence from politics through terrorism is applied in solving of religious problems. Whenever political pressure becomes more dominant, it normally causes a change towards the religious performances. The second form is where religious resolutions are applied towards politically related problems.

These practices are total efforts for justification of terrorism. The activities are also performed for attraction and motivation of terrorists all way through religious expressions. A big share of terrorist acts committed in the World is associated with Islam; however, there is ground to state that the religious terrorist acts in the world are conducted by followers of different religions.

For example, in 1982, suicidal bombings related to terrorism attacks were experienced globally; in this episode, the Islamic groups were attributable to eight percent of the cases of terrorism that happened (Pape and Feldman, pp.202-203); this is not only limited to Muslims but also other believers from different religious doctrines.

Diverse religions have various correspondences basically on how they should handle each other during disagreements. These disagreements to a certain extreme may facilitate terrorism activities amongst people. The guidelines on how individuals should perform their terrorism activities are based on divine writings.

Different people in various countries have diverse means of interpreting spiritual inscriptions. This advantage helps in the justification of many conflicting perspectives. It has been a habit that people’s elucidation of the spiritual scripts is perverted. However terrorism activities are thus motivated on religious basis.

Individuals have had their main interest being what they can gain rather than the teachings they can give to fellow colleagues. This fault activity is shared, and therefore common among various individuals from different religious doctrines, for instance: Christians, Jews and even Muslims.

This fault accentuates on personal achievements exceeding the interests of others. It’s nonetheless believed that having this kind of behavior is compensated. People’s exploitation on others in progression of their own egocentric concerns with pretext to religion promotes violence. Terrorism activities crop up from the acts of violence. These kinds of teachings are given to people in different religious canons. Whenever religion is taken beyond the boundary, then terrorism activities are highly boosted.

Contemporarily, following the rejection of ideas for example the great rights of emperors and the augmentation of people’s patriotism, terrorism would regularly be linked to revolution, nihilism as well as activist affairs of state. Conversely, ever since the 1980s, there has been a drastic rise in the terrorism activities provoked at large by religion.

Secular Terrorism: Essence and Justification

Considering the name of the phenomenon, secular terrorism does not have religious issues as a motive: secular terrorist acts have political background and political targets. Secular terrorism was used by a number of political leaders in the early centuries, for example, during the French revolution. In the nineteenth century, German as well as Italian main patriotic citizens also often practiced secular terrorism.

In Russia, a group “Narodnaya Volya” (“People’s Will”) also performed a campaign that entailed a lot of terrorist activities (Cronin, p.123); the violent campaign of struggles and assassinations was meant to protest against dictatorship in Russia. These however emerged to be role models to some comparable groups that were formed such as Serbs before the First World War.

Secular terrorism entails some widespread oratory names commonly called referring to the victims. For example ‘holy terror’ manifestos which is called to refer to the description of persons who are within the society of religious terrorists. “They are identified by such names to expose that they are being demeaned and also dehumanized.

Some other dehumanizing terms include ‘infidels’, ‘dogs’, ‘children of Satan’ and mud people” (Hoffmann, p.89). They intentionally used these terms to disregard everything and offer a justification that terrorism is significant and thus considerable. These people also depict the fatalities as being worthless and not being a human being. This removes all the demarcations against brutality as well as atrocities.

Religious Terrorism versus Secular Terrorism

The “religious motive versus secular motive” difference is the principal and the evident distinction between two discussed types of terrorism; however, it gives birth to a range of other differences. First and foremost, secular terrorism lacks a constituency:

Religious and secular terrorists also differ in their constituencies. Whereas secular terrorists attempt to appeal to a constituency variously composed of actual and potential sympathizers, members of the communities they purport to ‘defend’ or the aggrieved people for whom they claim to speak for; religious terrorists are at once activists and constituents engaged in what they regard as a total war (Hoffman, 1998).

They normally look for an appeal to their own constituency. As a result the self-controls on aggression which are inflicted on secular terrorism by the wish to call to a tacitly helpful constituency are not pertinent in religious terrorism.

This characteristic accommodates all individuals including non-members of the terrorists within the religious faction. It not only permits but also boosts vast bloodshed activities among individuals. Since this kind of terrorism depends on the targets, this feature broadens up to all the different classes of objectives.

Considering the essence of religious terrorism, it is not unexpected that religious terrorists never want to see themselves as mechanisms in the organization significantly correlated to providing defense to the existing system, which is opposed to the secular terrorists. They however would want to consider themselves as foreign defenders on the lookout for elementary transformations in within the present array.

This isolation feature is advantageous to the terrorist’s part. It helps them to demonstrate vast, disparaging and fatal kinds of terrorist operations. It also enables them to carry out more deadly operations as compared to secular terrorists. They moreover grip and explore all with the inclusion of unrestricted opponents for molestation.

In religious terrorism, the concerned terrorists commence with performance and accomplishment of the assigned task (Rapoport, 1984). Since they are granted an immediate obligation, their first activity is violence and complete destruction. This directly proves that this type of terrorism is carried out magnificently and perfectly. It’s not also restricted by either political or ethical limitations that may affect the terrorists. This therefore justifies the presence of vast terrorism activities related to various religious doctrines.

Secular terrorists always consider the antagonism and the violent behavior among themselves as proper means of initiating rectification towards a fault. This happens if the mistake that could have developed is being in-cooperated into the current system. This weakness is believed to be altered. They also consider violence as a way of stimulating the establishment of a latest move within the system. This acts as a great justification towards terrorism activities.

As a whole, it is possible to state that the essence of violence and aggression is different in cases of religious and secular terrorism. For religious terrorism, aggression is predominantly a sacramental action, or celestial responsibility carried out as a response to specific theological demands. Because of this, terrorist acts often assume transcendental aspects, while the executors are accordingly un-constrained by political, ethical and realistic restraints that could have effects on other terrorists.

This leads us to another criterion that demonstrates the difference between religious and secular terrorism: the scale of harm and damage which is considered to be much smaller in case of secular terrorist acts: secular terrorism infrequently attempts haphazard killing on colossal scales since such approaches are inconsonant with goals that are politically oriented (Hoffman, p.89).

Religious terrorism normally seeks to eliminate a largely defined class of opponents, and accordingly regards the large scale aggression, as ethically indispensable and as a measure to achieve certain objectives

Religious Terrorism and Secular Issues

It would be quite unreasonable to state that religion motives are the only component of such phenomenon as religious terrorism. Today it is quite difficult to define the border between secular and religious issues in religious terrorism, as sometimes terrorist acts have political aims, even more so political and religious issues may intersect in the confrontation, for example, like in case of Arabs and citizens of Israel.

Besides, some scholars consider that one of the sources of modern religious terrorism is the so-called “McDonaldization” of the world, or the prevalence of capitalism: for example, Barber states that Jihad reactions are born by the World that is “too homogeneous and too interconnected” (Gilly and Gilinskiy, p.213); thus, relisious terrorism is “not then the culprit but rather the antidote to over capitalism” (ibid.).

Religious Terrorism and Religion

Now, when we have discussed secular motives in religious terrorism, it is possible to touch upon the relation between religious terrorism and religion itself. Many people wonder how come religion that is considered the source of belief, inspiration and happiness may bring such huge destructions and cause so much suffering.

However, it is necessary to understand that there is a border between religions and religious terrorism, and these notions should not be confused or considered synonyms. The most “famous” cases of religious terrorism connected with Islam have contributed to the image of this religion as a “dangerous”, “aggressive” one, which is not reasonable. Terrorists whose actions are said to be initiated by the Islamic scriptures interpret these texts in a specific way which does not coincide with the way they are interpreted by the most population.

The most famous and powerful Muslim leaders say that Islam is against any terrorist acts and call them “Satanic actions” (Al-Khattar, p.61). The responses of a survey by the Pew Research Center (cited in Gilly and Gilinskiy, p.214) devoted to the question of whether suicide bombing is justified by Islam demonstrated that it is reasonable to consider Islam as a religious movement and Islamism as a terrorist movement as two separate issues.

However, on the other hand, justification of Islamic terrorist acts is to some extent affected by the political issues: for example, Muslim citizens may in part justify terrorist acts against Israel as a country in the state of war against Arabs; correspondingly, they have also expressed some ideas of approval of acts against the USA emphasizing that the country in the struggle (Al-Khattar, p.61).

At the same time, only the violence against the USA overseas the country is justified to some extent; the terrorist acts within the USA are not justified (p.62).

Case Study: Buddhism and Religious Terrorism

It is quite difficult for many people to imagine that Buddhism, the religion which associates with harmony and peacefulness, can be also a source of “inspiration” for religious terrorists. The doctrine called “ahisma”, which means “nonviolence”, teaches that Buddhism does not justify any kinds of terror (Juergensmeyer, p.113). However, history provides us with the examples of terrorist acts fulfilled by followers of Buddhism.

Particularly, we can allude to the cases of terror fulfilled by Sinhalese activists in Sri Lanka. These cases are of particular interest, as they demonstrate how religious and non-religious matters fuse in terrorism. On the one hand, terrorist acts in Sri Lanka had secular background, as they were fulfilled under the conditions of the Civil War (1983-2009); on the other hand, the actions of terrorists are considered to have been fulfilled in the name of Buddha (p.114).

The actions were supported by Buddhist monks and justified based on the ideas of Buddhism. Juergensmeyer (p.114) cites the opinion of a monk who participated in antigovernment actions; the monk alludes to the notion of “dukkha”, which is “the age of suffering”, and says that during such periods, violence gives birth to the counter violence (ibid.).

This response to political actions of the government is perceived by Buddhist terrorists as certain “karmic revenge” which is incarnated in the principle “…those who live by the sword die by the sword” (ibid.).

Thus, this case became the precedent for other Buddhist countries, and the law of karma became the ground for justification of terrorist acts. Despite all religions say that killing stains a killer’s soul, Buddhists focus on a person who has been killed and on the merit that comes to him/her. Thus, we see that in many cases, religion does not stay aside from secular life and becomes the source of motives for terrorist acts, as well as the ground for their justification.

Conclusion

The main aspects differentiating religious and secular forms of terror can also be responsible in making religious types of terrorism a lot more dangerous. “When violence is a sacramental act rather than a tactic for achieving political goals, there are no moral limits to what might be done, and seemingly little chance for a negotiated settlement” (Hoffman, p.98). When hostilities are aimed at eliminating adversaries from the face of earth, genocides can easily erupt.

Religious and secular terrorism has spartanly diverse discernments in their modes of operation and their vicious actions. In this case, secular terrorism considers aggression either as ways of bringing about the rectification of faults in systems that are essentially superior, or as a way of stimulating the formation of new systems.

On the other hand, religious terrorism considers itself not as a constituent in a particular structure worth safeguarding, but as an outside component looking for basic alterations in a presented order. “This sense of alienation also enables the religious terrorist to contemplate far more destructive and deadly types of terrorist operations than secular terrorists, and indeed to embrace a far more open-ended category of ‘enemies’ for attack” (Hoffman, p.98).

Therefore in differentiating the two types of terrorism, we can say religious terrorism could possibly harbor identifiable political objectives for negotiation, while secular terrorism probably makes use of religion to attain adherents or instigate immense enthusiasm.

List of References

Al-Khattar, A.M., 2003. Religion and Terrorism: an Interfaith Perspective. Westport (Connecticut); London: Praeger.

Cronin, A. K., 2009. How Terrorism Ends: Understanding the Decline and Demise of Terrorist Campaigns. Princeton, NJ [etc.]: Princeton University Press.

Gilly, T.A. and Gilinskiy, Y., 2009. The Ethics of Terrorism: Innovative Appropaches from an International Perspective. Springfield, Ill.: Charles C. Thomas.

Hoffman, B., 1998. Inside Terrorism. Columbia: Columbia University Press.

Juergensmeyer, M, 2004. Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Pape, R.A. and Feldman, J.K., 2010. Cutting the Fuse: The Explosion of Global Suicide Terrorism and How to Stop It. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Rapoport, D., 1984. “Fear and Trembling: Terrorism in Three Religious Traditions.” American Political Science Review 78 (3), pp. 659-667.

Stern, J., 2003. Terror in The Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill. New York: Ecco Publishers.

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