Religion of a terrorist!

During the Munich Security Conference 2011, Prime Minister David Cameron made a belated, yet very pertinent comment, by clearly distinguishing Islam from violent extremism. He acknowledged that many of Britain's homegrown terrorists are not the product of failed integration, but rather "have been graduates and often middle class."

Historically, extremism has never been confined to any particular religion or ideology; it may belong to every religion and culture. The Duke University and University of North Carolina published a study on terrorism in February 2011. It revealed that in 2009, non-Muslim Americans were involved in terrorist plots more than Muslim Americans; last year there were more than 20 plots by non-Muslims.

Also, the Triangle Centre on Terrorism and Homeland Security has confirmed that tips from the Muslim American community resulted in the prevention of potential terrorist plots in 48 of the 120 cases involving Muslim Americans.

The data from the Muslim Public Affairs Council, too, indicates that the Muslim community has helped law enforcement agencies in 75 percent of Al-Qaeda related plots since December 2009. Moreover, the number of American Muslims involved in the terrorist acts has dropped by more than half as compared to 2009.

David Schanzer, Director of the Triangle Centre, said: “Americans should take note that these crimes are being perpetrated by a handful of people whose actions are denounced and rejected by virtually all the Muslims living in the United States.”

Mark Fallon, a 30-year veteran of the federal law enforcement and counterintelligence, says that the Muslim community has provided a "significant level of cooperation" in combating terrorism. However, he is worried that the rhetoric from some critics, like Representative Peter King, risks alienating a segment of the American population that "needs to be part of the solution." He is of the opinion that the process of radicalisation, or violent extremism, is usually a function of conditions highly personal to the subject, rather than ideological.

Robert Pape, a political scientist of Chicago University, has carried out an in-depth study on the genesis of extremism. His study is based on the data collected from over 300 suicide terrorist campaigns executed around the world as well as on the information about more than 450 terrorists. His findings show that there is little connection between suicide terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism, or any one of the world’s religions. Rather, all suicide terrorist attacks had in common been a specific political objective: ‘To compel foreign countries to withdraw military forces from territory that the terrorists consider to be their homeland’. Pape says: “In general, suicide attackers are rarely socially isolated, clinically insane, or economically destitute individuals, but are most often educated, socially integrated, and highly capable people, who could be expected to have a good future.” Out of the sample of his study of suicide terrorists, only 21 percent were Islamists.