Terrorism Is Certainly Not A Muslim Monopoly

''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.

[All Christian People Are Not Bad People, But All Christian Countries are Responsible for The Most Deaths World Wide Caused by Dropping Biggest Bombs in Their Arsenal]

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 War1 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. Those were Hindu and Sikh rather than Muslims.

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. There is nothing Islamic 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 the leaders of independent Israel like Moshe Dayan, Yitzhak Rabin, Menachem Begin and 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-Meinhoff 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. Unfortunately they were not Muslims.

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 organization for almost a century. Spain and France face a terrorist challenge from ETA, the Basque terrorist organization.

Africa is ravaged by so much civil war and internal strife that few people even bother to check which groups can be labeled 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 happened 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 Muslims. But they are only one of several militant groups. The Punjabmilitants, 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 opposed 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 that 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 and anytime.

So they focus attention on Islamic militancy. They pay little notice to other forms of terrorism in Africa, Sri Lanka or India: those pose no threat to the West.