Home > What are the causes of terrorism?

What are the causes of terrorism?

by Open-Publishing - Monday 8 January 2007
4 comments

Wars and conflicts International Attack-Terrorism USA

The Iraq war? Thousands of people were killed in attacks that took place before the Iraq invasion - the Paris attacks of 1995-6, 9/11, the 2002 Bali bombings, to name but a few.

US support for Israel? The Clinton administration worked harder than any other for peace in the Middle-East, and al-Qaeda mushroomed under its watch. In the 1990s Washington’s efforts to bring Israelis and Palestinians together were rewarded by the first attack on the World Trade Center, as well as those on its Kenyan and Tanzanian embassies and the USS Cole – not to mention the foiled plan to bomb LA airport on New Year’s 2000. 9/11 was being planned as the administration was making a final, heroic push for peace in mid-2000. Furthermore, Arab countries — including Morocco, Tunisia and Saudi Arabia — have been hit by terrorist attacks.

Poverty? Bin Laden did not exactly emerge from the slums of Ryadh. Those who planned and carried out the 2001 attacks on the US were graduates leading middle-class lives. They did not act out of desperation, but out of ideology. Poor young men in Accra seek to attract the attention of scouts from Arsenal football club, not al-Qaeda.

Dictatorship? There are terrorist cells across Western Europe. The London bombings were perpetrated by British men who have never known dictatorship.

Support for dictatorships? Terrorism has claimed 1,000 lives in Thailand in the past 18 months. Which odious regime does Bangkok support? Or Indonesia, for that matter.

So what is the cause of terrorism? As the French writer Rémy de Gourmont once wrote, “the awful thing when you look for the truth is that you find it.” The glaring link between all the attacks I have mentioned is that they have been carried out by Muslims in the name of Islam.

I am not claiming that Islam itself is the cause of terror, only pointing to a perversion of religion which the Tunisian writer called “the disease of Islam”.

The epidemiological approach to ideas was pioneered by the British zoologist and essayist Richard Dawkins – notably in his classic Viruses of the Mind article. His analysis applies to Islamic terrorism.

Just as genes use the self-replicating mechanism of AND to thrive, ideas spread by using the propensity of the human mind to absorb and pass on information. In the realm of ideas, some of the replicators are pathogens that spread by contamination, causing harm to their successive hosts.

In the case of Islamic terrorism, the virus spreads through a religion – which in Dawkinsian terms should be compared to a population with particular characteristics that can be exploited by pathogens. Islam is not the disease, but the pool where it develops.

Other doctrines have in the past been similarly infected– notably Christendom under the crusades, whose hate-virus wreaked more havoc than terrorism has so far. More recently, in the 1970s and 1980s, terrorism was a Marxist disease.

Now some doctrines may be more or less susceptible to the virus, and I plead ignorance about the underlying health of Islam. But there is no doubt that it is currently infected. It is pointless – indeed harmful – to give false reassurance by identifying spurious reasons for the symptoms. The patient must be told the truth.

I do not know where the next atrocity will take place – a rich or a poor country, one that is allied to Israel, hostile, or neutral, one that opposes or supports the war in Iraq. But what I do know is that the bombers will be Muslims and that their aim will be to crush the infidels.

Forum posts

  • Have you ever heard of the Pirates of the Barbary Coast. They were the terrorists of their day. The USA won that war.

  • The guy yelling in all caps is pretty much correct- but I do think it’d come across better if he calmed down a bit.

    The root cause of terrorism is the group of evil bastards that currently control many world governments, including US, UK, Australia and Israel. All the modern terrorism we’ve seen recently are ’false flag’ operations. Everyone knows about ’frame-ups’ in small time cases, but they can’t fathom that someone would frame a whole country, or a whole race. Well they have. Hitler framed the Jews as ’the enemy’- now Bush and Bliar say its muslims- the clash of civilizations. They actually want people to believe that muslims hate America and attacked us because they were jealous. hahahaha.

    The US andUK today are exactly as Orwell wrote- 24/7 surveillance, cameras, microphones to eavesdrop. speakers on shout poles... big brother is everywhere- literally fabricating terror to keep the populace submissive. Orwell correctly predicted, "The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous." You can see this playing out today in Iraq/n.

  • Thank you for putting into words what many need to know. The truth will bring forth light and the light is coming.