Terrorism is not a Muslim monopoly
BY SWAMINATHAN S. ANKLESARIA AIYAR
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
http://timesofindia .indiatimes. com/articleshow/ 1794203.cms
"All Muslims may not be terrorists but all terrorists are Muslims." This comment,
frequently heard after the Mumbai bomb blasts, implies that terrorism is a
Muslim specialty, if not a monopoly. The facts are very different.
First, there is nothing new about terrorism. In 1881, anarchists killed the
Russian Tsar Alexander II and 21 bystanders. In 1901, anarchists killed US
President McKinley as well as King Humbert I of
Italy.
World War I started in 1914 when anarchists killed Archduke Ferdinand of
Austria. These terrorist attacks were not Muslim. Terrorism is generally
defined as the killing of civilians for political reasons.
Going by this definition, the British Raj referred to Bhagat Singh,
Chandrashekhar Azad and many other Indian freedom fighters as terrorists.
These were Hindu and Sikh rather than Muslim.
Guerrilla fighters from
Mao Zedong to
Ho Chi Minh and
Fidel Castro killed civilians during their revolutionary campaigns. They
too were called terrorists until they triumphed.
Nothing Muslim about them. In Palestine, after
World War II, Jewish groups (the
Haganah, Irgun and Stern Gang) fought for the creation of a Jewish state,
bombing hotels and installations and killing civilians.
The British, who then governed Palestine, rightly called these Jewish groups
terrorists. Many of these terrorists later became leaders of independent Israel
– Moshe Dayan,
Yitzhak Rabin,
Menachem Begin,
Ariel Sharon.
Ironically, these former terrorists then lambasted terrorism, applying this
label only to Arabs fighting for the very same nationhood that the Jews had
fought for earlier.
In
Germany in 1968-92, the Baader-Meinhof Gang killed dozens, including the
head of Treuhand, the German privatisation agency. In
Italy, the
Red Brigades kidnapped and killed Aldo Moro, former prime minister.
The
Japanese Red Army was an Asian version of this.
Japan was also the home of
Aum Shinrikyo, a Buddhist cult that tried to kill thousands in the
Tokyo metro system using nerve gas in 1995.
In
Europe, the
Irish Republican Army has been a Catholic terrorist organisation for
almost a century.
Spain and
France face a terrorist challenge from ETA, the Basque terrorist
organisation.
Africa is ravaged by so much civil war and internal strife that few people even
bother to check which groups can be labelled terrorist. They stretch across the
continent.
Possibly the most notorious is the Lord’s Salvation Army in
Uganda, a Christian outfit that uses children as warriors. In
Sri Lanka, the
Tamil Tigers have long constituted one of the most vicious and formidable
terrorist groups in the world.
They were the first to train children as terrorists. They happen to be Hindus.
Suicide bombing is widely associated with Muslim Palestinians and Iraqis but the
Tamil Tigers were the first to use this tactic on a large scale.
One such suicide bomber assassinated Rajiv Gandhi in 1991. In
India, the militants in Kashmir are Muslim. But they are only one of
several militant groups. The
Punjab militants, led by Bhindranwale, were Sikhs.
The
United Liberation Front of Assam is a Hindu terrorist group that targets
Muslims rather than the other way round.
Tripura has witnessed the rise and fall of several terrorist groups and
so have Bodo strongholds in
Assam.
Christian Mizos mounted an insurrection for decades and Christian Nagas are
still heading militant groups. But most important of all are the
Maoist terrorist groups that now exist in no less than 150 out of
India’s 600 districts.
They have attacked police stations and killed and razed entire villages that
oppose them. These are secular terrorists (like the Baader-Meinhof Gang or
Red Brigades).
In terms of membership and area controlled, secular terrorists are far ahead of
Muslim terrorists. In sum, terrorism is certainly not a Muslim monopoly.
There are or have been terrorist groups among Christians, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs
and even Buddhists. Secular terrorists (anarchists, Maoists) have been the
biggest killers.
Why then is there such a widespread impression that most or all terrorist groups
are Muslim? I see two reasons. First, the Indian elite keenly follows the
western media and the West feels under attack from Islamic groups.
Catholic Irish terrorists have killed far more people in Britain than Muslims
yet the subway bombings in London and
Madrid are what Europeans remember today.
The Baader-Meinhof Gang, IRA and
Red Brigades no longer pose much of a threat but after 9/11, Americans
and Europeans fear that they could be hit anywhere, anytime. So they focus
attention on Islamic militancy.
They pay little notice to other forms of terrorism in Africa,
Sri Lanka or
India: these pose no threat to the West. Within
India, Maoists pose a far greater threat than Muslim militants in 150
districts, one-third of
India’s area.
But major cities feel threatened only by Muslim groups. So the national elite
and media focus overwhelmingly on Muslim terrorism. The elite are hardly aware
that this is an elite phenomenon.
(Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar is consulting editor, The Economic Times and
writes regularly for The Economic Times and The Times of India.)