Misconceptions About Religion and Terrorism

by Mia Parry

Terrorist attacks committed by Muslim extremists receive 357% more press coverage than those committed by non-Muslims. Firstly it’s important to define the term ‘terrorism’. The UK’s Terrorism Act 2000 describes it as: “The use or threat of action designed to influence the government or an international governmental organisation or to intimidate the public, or a section of the public; made for the purposes of advancing a political, a religious, a racial or an ideological cause.” This term often gets misused in the media. The number of fatalities from terror attacks in the UK between 1970 and 2015 stands at 3,395. To put this into perspective over the last decade, the annual chance of being killed in a terrorist attack in the UK was 1 in 11.4 million per year.

It’s important to remember that Islam is most certainly not the only source of terrorism in the UK and are in fact targeted by other extremist groups. In 2013, a Ukrainian right-wing extremist stabbed a Muslim man from Birmingham to death before setting off bombs outside of mosques. Although nobody was killed in the bombings, they were aimed at starting a “race war”.

Recent attackers in the West have been “lone wolves” who have been radicalized from afar by the so called ‘Islamic State’ through recruitment by extremists Muslim communities. On their own they don't pose an extreme threat to society, however it’s the tightly knit and ever expanding group ISIS where individuals are recruited and radicalised globally, (usually vulnerable men in their mid-twenties) which poses a greater threat. Public paranoia originates from cultural diversity between the Islamic religion and western society along with the unpredictability of the attacks.

The internet makes everything a lot scarier, with Muslim extremists able to communicate between countries such as Syria, Iraq and the UK at the click of a button. It's no surprise that 30,000 fighters from at least 85 countries have joined ISIS as of December 2015.

The actions of extremist groups such as ISIS have had a profound effect on the public’s view on the Islamic religion and its followers as a whole. The ways in which Muslims are talked about with the media is often negative with 34% of stories involving Islam and terrorism and 26% of stories suggesting that Islam was either dangerous, backwards or irrational. Only 17% of stories were found to show Islam as postitively part of a multicultural society. Therefore the press can be seen as both contributing to, and reinforcing an Islamophobic discourse, thus influencing society to view Islam as an extreme and violent religion as one third of UK citizens believes Islam threatens the western way of life. Due to this Muslims are subjected to antisemitism and face employment challenges with less than 20% of Muslim adults in full-time employment. 

Extremist Muslims use the ideologies of lesser jihad to validate their terrorist actions. Unlike greater jihad, which is striving to resist evil with oneself and becoming a better person, lesser jihad is striving to resist evil in the world through physical or military means. The prophet Muhammad took action against people who persecuted Muslims which is known as jihad bi-al-saif (striving with the sword). A key quotation from the Qur’an states ‘Fight them until there is no more persecution, and worship is devoted to God’ which extremist Muslims use as a reason to kill non Muslims and destroy other religions holy buildings. Most Muslims understand that this quotation means that fighting in self defence can become necessary as long as it keeps within the limits set by Allah. Terrorist grounds such as ISIS and Boko Haram believe they have a duty to fight non Muslims so Islam can dominate the world and belive that all that die in battle become a martyr and will go to paradise. The majority of Muslims believe that this is a wrong interpretation of jihad and that nothing can justify terrorism.