The Religious Terrorist

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Substantive Analysis:
Introduction:
Terrorism is used around the world to create fear and influence the public on political views (Siegel, 489). There are four views of terrorism including the psychological view, socialization view, ideological view, and the alienation view. A religious terrorist would most likely fit under the ideological view. In this view the terrorist feels the need to change a wrong opinion and believes that, because they are sacrificing themselves for something they believe so strongly in, it justifies the damage and harm done to innocent people (Siegel, 490). They use terror to create fear in anyone who opposes them and attract followers to their religion. In short, terrorism is widely used for political reasons but religion has been linked to the violence as well.
Religious Terrorism in the World:
Terrorism has been around for centuries and religion-based violence has been around just as long. (Hoffman, 2). The violence was never referred to as terrorism though. Only up to the nineteenth century has religion been able to justify terrorism (Hoffman, 2). Since then, religious terrorism became motivated and inspired by the ideological view (Hoffman, 3). Therefore, it has turned against the main focus of religion and more towards the views of the extremist and what is happening politically (Winchester, 4).
Most religions specify that violence is not allowed and yet extremists will cause major destruction in the name of their God. However, some people are too quick to blame religion on terrorism (Winchester, 2). In actuality, it is the nature of human beings to prove that their way is right, there way of doing that is using fear and destruction (Winchester, 3). It is not religion that causes the terr...

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Connections: The Middle East. 2002. Web. 3 Nov 2013

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