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Religion and Terrorism

I understand the concept of religion being the "biggest cause of terrorism" but I feel that this is misrepresented. I do agree that religion is the biggest excuse for terrorism, but I am not sure that it is the cause. In Encyclopedia of Wars -by Charles Phillips (Author), Alan Axelrod (Author): there are a total of 1,763 wars listed of which 123 are listed as religious wars.

The State Departments lists 42 terrorist entities of which 21 have religious leanings and 14 are specifically religious (http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/fs/37191.htm).

Until the 1970's terrorist activity in the United States was mainly politically aimed (communist, leftist, fascist, and other ists…) with clear political agendas. In the 70's we started to see an increase in the number of terrorist groups that were associated with a religious or nationalist agenda but these attacks were political and not religious. Members of this group were the PLO, Jewish Defense League, and others. We still saw the majority of terrorist activities attributed to political groups. In the USA the leading terrorists were the Black Liberation Army.

Throughout the 80's we saw a significant rise in the amount of terrorist activities being reported and most were political in nature. Political extremists had found a way to express their discontent and voiced it often. During the 80's we also started to see a rise in eco-terrorism and animal rights terrorists groups (ELF and ALF being the largest). Remember the 80's was also the reign of the Unabomber. In 1989 we saw a significant rise in the amount of terrorist activities in Columbia and other parts of South and Central America. These activities carried on as the most prolific in the world through the 90's.

During the 90's there was an increase in the number of terrorist activities being reported from Muslim nations, but most of these activities were claimed by nationalist groups that were Islamic by religion but did not state an Islamic purpose. In 1993 the first Trade Center Bombing was attempted. The bulk of terrorist activities at this point were still associated with rebels in South and Central America but we did see a rise in terrorism directed towards anger about the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands. During this time most Islamic terrorism was conducted in Islamic lands and on Islamic people. Some terrorism was being seen conducted towards the Russians but this was done in lands where Muslims dominated the population and many of these groups were supported by the USA.

In the first portion of the new millennium Basque separatists and Columbian FARC dominated the terrorist news world with their actions. In 2001 the 9-11 Trade Center Bombing made terrorism a fore-front in the eyes of US Citizens. Since 2001 there have been less terrorist attacks in the USA then ever in the history of the USA. The majority of terrorist attacks were conducted in Israel and Columbia until 2003 where we saw a massive increase in the number of terrorist attacks in Iraq.

Since 2003 the majority of world-reported terrorism incidents were conducted by groups affiliated with Islam. We still see just as many attacks by the political terrorist but the number of terrorist activities by Muslim terrorist groups has grown exponentially. Many have speculated that this increase in terrorism being used as a tactical weapon began because of Iraq, Turkey, Syria, and Saudi Arabia fighting for control of a post-Saddam Iraq yet none of these countries having the power to face America in a head-to-head war. That is why we see the majority of attacks are conducted on the civilians and not on the US Military.

In Southern Iraq, my operations teams found that most of the assassinated Iraqis we investigated were those who fought against Iraq in the Iraq-Iran wars and now that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard has activities inside of Iraq they are using this time to eliminate old rivals. On the Syrian border, we saw Syrian backed terrorist attacking anyone that fought against the Baathist regime. Remember – Syria is ruled by the Baathist Shi'ite minority and Iraq was ruled by the Baathist Sunni minority. This is more political then religious and has more to do with power and control then religious ideology, even if the young people who are blowing themselves up don't know it.

All of this information has come from Terrorist Activities Listings by www.GlobalIncidentMap.com. This is a pay-site but you can get a pretty accurate reading from Wikipedia (I don't usually use them as a reference but this portion of Wikipedia is actually pretty accurate) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents.

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