Part of this essay appeared in a debate on Quora to the question:

Do you believe only a Jihadi John indoctrinated by Islamic terrorism could be as barbaric as he appeared to be in his boastful videos?

“My faith is better than yours; My God is the only God; yours is a Devil” reasoning often leads to terrorism; “My tribe is superior to yours; my colour is better; yours is ugly” are also reasons for terrorism.

Inquisitions, the genocide of entire races in America and Australia; enslaving unarmed (or lesser armed) people of a different colour  (all with the religious consent and encouragement) were, and are terrorist activities. Crimes against Boers by the British, Crimes of Afrikaners against Blacks, mass murder of innocents by the British in Jalianwala Bagh in India, Slaughter of Armenians by Turks; Holocaust by Hitler (though Christians might deny it, Hitler repeatedly said that destroying Jews was his Saviour Jesus’ cause – click here for his very religious speech on the cause of Jesus) , massive napalm-bombing of Vietnam peasants by the United States (carried on under 5 consecutive presidents blessed and supported by Preacher Billy Graham); My Lai Massacre, An unnecessary war against Saddam Hussein under the obviously false excuse of WMD (in the face of stiff opposition by United Nations) that led to the current holocaust in the Middle East leading to death  and maiming of millions of civilians including women children and infants in the womb ( a-la God’s orders in the Old Testament)  were all acts of terrorism.

Ku Klux Clan that lynched nearly 3500 blacks for the sin of being blacks were loathsome terrorists. Dutch Reformist Church that justified Apartheid quoting Noah’s curse on his grandson Canaan were terrorists. The Pope of the 15th Century who issued a Bull that all ‘savages’ who did not accept Christianity should be subjugated and enslaved was a terrorist fatwah worse than those issued by Ayatollah Khomeini or  men of Islamic State.

While Europe had invented various instruments of torture, Britain led other Europeans in terrorist ways  all through the 16th to 20th Century in colonization, slave trading, bonded labour, burning of their own old women after naming them witches, public hanging of petty thieves  – the list is endless.

If Hitler with his twisted genius (no doubt fired by the writings of Henry Ford a couple of decades earlier)  caused the death of millions of Jews, that terrorism ended with his suicide. However, the terrorism invented by Winston Churchill and his attempt at achieving two gains at one stroke – getting rid of the Jewish population from England and displacing Muslims in retribution of their demand for  freedom as their side of the bargain (in fighting with England against Turkey’s Caliphate) – was a masterstroke whose embers continue to terrorise and demonize Israeli  Jews on the one hand, and terrorize Palestine Muslims on a larger scale on the other. The letter written by Winston Churchill to Peel Commission  justifying the forced  evacuation of Palestinians from their land, and the occupation and genocide of Native Americans in the American continent and the aboriginal Australians is a glaring example of Western racism and contempt for the non-whites. . Click here to read  operative parts of this infamous letter (unerlined in red) that Peel Commission was too ashamed to publish, but about which Churchill himself had no such scruples.

George Bush’s destruction of hospitals, schools, men, women and children in the name of looking for one man and calling those deaths ‘collateral damage’; which was  followed by drone attacks in Afghanistan under Nobel Peace winner Barack Obama, inhuman torture in Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, ‘legally authorised’ by President Bush which Obama failed to discontinue  while mouthing solemn views against it, all qualify as terrorism. Most of these heinous carnages were of religious nature, or sanctioned  by religious silence or openly blessed.

USSVincennes Commander William C. Rogers III. shooting down an Iranian civil airliner flying on its regular route in plain daylight, killing 290 persons on board was terrorism. Bush (I) boasting America does not apologize for whatever wrong was done smacked of a terrorist challenge that I wonder if Jihadi John was capable of. The ship that fired was in Iranian waters; the flight was on its regular civilian route; the US Navy had no business to be there. Iran-Iraq was coming to a close, anyway.

The shooting down of Rwandan President Habyarimana and Burundian President Ntaryamira led the way to the horrific Rwandan genocide of nearly a million Tutsis and Moderate Hutus by the government and the army, predominantly  by Hutus.  Thousands of women were raped.  In the end, AIDS became a common infliction in the entire area.  Among those massacred were the cream of Rwandan society – doctors, engineers, skilled workers and teachers. The perpetrators and the victims  were not Muslims – but largely Catholics, and a small percentage of  Protestants. Muslims, being less than 5%, had a minor role in the genocide – more as victims.

The most recent and the most suspicious shooting down of a civilian airline over the  Donetsk smacks of gross state terrorism. The pilot  was reportedly instructed to divert the route over Ukraine to fly over rebel-held Donetsk where it was shot down by missiles. Though the black boxes have been recovered, but contents not disclosed. Russia and Ukraine continue to dispute who caused the midair death of 298 innocent civilians (including 80 children). Political disputes end up in terrorism against humanity.

The hijacking of 4 airliners and plunging two to bring down the Word Trade Centre in Europe on 9/11, causing the death of at least 3000 humans and an unknown number of illegal immigrants  (who oil the US machine cheaply)  was terrorism of the most daring, planned  and  ominous kind – a proof to what depth religious fanaticism, anger and envy against material progress can sink human beings to.
We do not know how Osama Bin Laden was involved in the deadly attack that shook the United States and rendered quite a few overseas Muslims proud until the consequences of distrust visited on them, but the man who certainly had a hand in nurturing international terrorism now lies under the sea, shot in cold blood in the presence of his wives by a US Navy Seal. Capturing him alive could have led to lot of information on Al Qaeda organization. On the other hand, it could have burst the much blown-out bubble that the attack was masterminded by Bin Laden. It is another matter that, like all terrorists  tend to do, he owned up his part in the dastardly operation.

When we pretend to be so frightened  of  Islamic terrorism and focus entirely on it , we tend to forget  the planned genocide of Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica by the Orthodox Christians of Serbia which happened as lately as 1995. About 9000 able-bodied men were killed, many of their women were raped, even little babies were beheaded for crying.

Not all acts of terrorism have been by one religious fanaticism against another. The genocide in Darfur, Sudan that started in 2003  still causes suffering to 2.5 million displaced people,  was (largely) by Sunni Muslims against Sunni Muslims. The International Court of Justice prosecution case against the President Omar Hassan Ahmad Al Bashir  committed the crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in Darfur states, among other things, stated:

“For over 5 years, armed forces and the Militia/Janjaweed (meaning devils on horses), on AL BASHIR orders, have attacked and destroyed villages. They then pursued the survivors in the desert. Those who reached the camps for the displaced people were subjected to conditions calculated to bring about their destruction. AL BASHIR obstructs international assistance. His forces surround the camps. One victim said: “When we see them, we run. Some of us succeed in getting away, and some are caught and taken to be raped — gang-raped. Maybe around 20 men rape one woman. […] These things are normal for us here in Darfur. These things happen all the time. I have seen rapes too. It does not matter who sees them raping the women — they don’t care. They rape girls in front of their mothers and fathers”.

The suffering continues while the world watches on. Omar Bashir still lords over Darfur, treating the ICJ case against him with disdain.

You lie when you say that Syrian refugees are running away from ISIS atrocities. Ordinary  Muslims are trained to put up with the cruelties of the Sharia law and would rather stick to their own homes if they had the choice. What they are running away at the risk of drowning in the sea and being pushed around. This citizen-journalism image provided by Aleppo Media Center AMC which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting shows damaged buildings due to heavy fighting between government forces and Free Syrian Army fighters in Aleppo, Syria, Thursday, Sept. 19, 2013. A Syrian activist group says al-Qaida-linked gunmen have captured a town near the Turkish border after heavy fighting with a rebel group. (AP Photo/Aleppo Media Center, AMC). What makes people to run to be humiliated and rejected in the unknown Europe is your incessant bombing that turns their homes into rubble, pulverizes their schools and  hospitals and deprive them of food and clothing even if they have the money. Human trafficking that leads to death by drowning and abject humiliation to the survivors who seek refuge in strange countries with unfamiliar culture is terrorism. The trafficking of young girls and boys that take place in South and South East Asia to promote prostitution for money is filthy terrorism.  

Bombing, killing and kidnapping of girls for slave trade that happens in Western Africa is something meaner than terrorism. The day after Saudi Arabia convened a meeting of Arab States against terrorism, it beheaded – beheaded! – at least 43 persons and shot 4, mostly for voicing opinions different to what the Sheikdom propagates and practices. That is Islamic terrorism right at the top.  In 2015 alone, the new ‘moderate’ government of Iran executed 977 citizens, including at least 2 child offenders and a woman who is alleged to have killed her husband at the age of 17. Alleged crimes included apostasy and insulting the Prophet, homosexuality and those related to drugs.

The Palestinian family doing their things in their house or in a refugee camp might be blown to bit by an Israeli rocket; the Israeli is not safe even at his wedding reception or a teenage party. Today a man in Nigeria or Somalia, or France,  London or New York  – you name the city – cannot feel safe going to a cinema, a railway station or airport. You cannot take a seat on an airplane without being paranoid. You are afraid of beards, skull-caps and turbans; the man with the beard or skull cap or turban is equally afraid of being shot in a petrol pump or outside his house. Black people are not safe even in their churches; the  white youngster sitting  among the worshipers might pull out an automatic and shoot the whole lot. Kindergarten kids and their teachers are not safe. A black man in the streets of America cannot drive a car or sit by the wayside or inspect an air rifle in a mall without being afraid that a white cop might not put a few bullets into him in alleged self-defence. Eric Gardner, an unarmed black man in the picture, was killed by
“chokehold” by white cops. The killers were not prosecuted.  3,600 men women and children die from gunshot wounds in a year in the United States. Ten citizen a day, that is three times  more than the number of alleged criminals executed all over the world in 2015, which by itself is a record for state executions. The United States terrorizes its death row prisoners before killing them. It is said that a Jihadi takes as long as fifteen minutes to behead his victim. There are records of a lethal injection or electrocution being carried on for forty-five minutes and more in US state prisons, causing enormous pain to the unfortunate victims. One out of nine of those victims later turn out to be falsely implicated, but there is little sign of remorse on the part of the state governments. Judge Antonin Scalia of the US Supreme Court ruled that it is OK to execute a man who had been tried and found guilty through the legal process but found innocent later. This order came in the 21st Century.

When a large number of people are terrorized and face possible carnage, you must call it terrorism. Buddhism whose core principle is non-violence showed its ugly teeth among the monks of Srilanka and Myanmar. Thousands of Hindu, Christian and Muslim Tamils were murdered in Srilanka; the Rohingya Muslims of Myanmar are on the run for their lives just as Syrian civilians are running away not just from Islamic State terrorism, but also al-Assad terrorism, as well as American, Saudi and Russian aerial terrorism. . Saudi Arabians, who are supposed to be fighting alongside Americans bomb the Assad army that fights Islamic  State terrorism. It is terrorism gone mad.

Pakistan, the breakaway Muslim majority state is much smaller than India in terms of size and population. Soon after partition, it had been promising thousand-year wars and a thousand cuts on India, the idea being to prop up the status of the military. Its intelligence agency, ISI (which rhymes so well with ISIS) trained and equipped by CIA had been training terrorists for nearly half a century to get even with India since two wars didn’t help; the third one resulted in the loss of its eastern wing which became Bangladesh. Soon after its independence from Pakistan that  it won with the aid of Hindu-majority India, Muslims of Bangladesh engaged in their own brand of terrorism against Hindu and Buddhist minorities.  Ever since George Bush forced the military dictator Musharraf’s  hands to fight against the Taliban which his own intelligence had created (by way of terror threat to bomb Pakistan to the stone age if it didn’t cooperate), Taliban has turned against the Country. Military installations are regularly bombed; so are Shia mosques. Taliban terrorism now visits schools – killing a  hundred thirty-two kids in its wake. Bush did not bomb Pakistan to the stone age, but he did  nearly that to  much of neighbouring Afghanistan, which has given birth to a new set of terrorists there. Who can match American terrorism with its capacity to destroy the earth forty times over and who actually terrorized Japan (which was due to surrender anyways) into submission by the destruction of two whole cities and nearly all of their population?

Genocide of  Bengali-speaking Muslims and minority Hindus and Buddhists in what was then known as East Pakistan by the Muslims of West Pakistan (which later became the only Pakistan), aided and abetted by the Urdu-speaking  locals , deserves to be treated as one of the most heinous genocides of the twentieth century, matched only by the  1947 post-partition mutual genocide by Muslims and Hindus. The government-directed carnage, named Operation Searchlight so fittingly, sought out and killed and maimed  students of the Dhaka university, teachers, professors, scientists, writers and intellectuals of all kind were collected in military trucks and summarily disposed of.  ” President Yahya Khan at a conference in February 1971  just before the commencement of the operation is reported to have said, “Kill three million of them (Bangladeshis) and the rest will eat out of our hands”.  At least 3 million were killed; 10 million fled to neighbouring India. Knowing well the extent of the genocide going on, President Nixon sent his 7th Fleet to target the Indian Army that had joined the fray. Before the war could escalate, Pakistan surrendered, Bangladesh declared independence. Nothing has been learnt from the lessons of history. Islamic extremists have raised their heads again while the current government is prosecuting the surviving Urdu-speaking fifth column men and having them hanged some forty-five years later.

What I mentioned till now was Christian and Islamic terrorism, which is as old as a few decades after the  birth of Jesus Christ and the days the Prophet is supposed to have received his message from God – respectively. What prompted me to ask that question you answered  is the Hindu (the religion into which I was born) terrorism that mushroomed  after the destruction of a four-hundred-year-old mosque in the Northern Province (UP) of India. Some of the best-known leaders of India were involved in the senseless destruction that was supposed to avenge the  destruction of an alleged Ram temple in that location nearly five hundred years ago by an Islamic conqueror named  Zahir-ud-din Muhammad Babur. Since the time of their founder, extremist Muslims give great importance to disfiguring statues, artefacts of value,  monuments and places of worship just as  Taliban destroyed Bamiyan Buddha in the face of international opposition and its the newer and baser version Islamic State has been doing in Iraq and Syria.

The spiteful destruction of the dilapidated and disused mosque was aimed at slighting the Mulsim population of India by the leaders of a right-wing, Hindu-nation oriented BJP (acronym for Hindi words meaning Indian People’s Party). This aim was instantly achieved, leading  to many mutual murders among Hindus and Muslims.  Hindus galvanized and led by a regional gang leader Bal Thackeray of  Shiv Sena (Shiva’s army) with even more jingoist ideals than the BJP. This  caused much terror in Muslim areas with killing and arson; Muslims reacted with lesser outcome on account of their smaller number in any given area. A subsequent bombing of Bombay at a dozen places was engineered by his Muslim counterpart Dawood Ibrahim, killing at least 257 and injuring 1400 (many of whom were permanently maimed).  Dawood and his henchman Tiger Memon are living in luxury – supposeldy  in Pakistan. Tiger’s brother Yakub Memon, a practicing chartered accountant, along with the rest of the family  ran away  in  instinctive fright, but came back to India in the belief that there was nothing for them to fear.  Yakub spilled the beans on the complicity of Pakistan in the operation but was nonetheless hanged by the government in a great hurry, ignoring all decent norms set by the Supreme Court during the previous years.  At  least 28 convicts were awaiting the noose in the same jail when Yakub was hanged to gain political points. Bal Thackeray was given a state funeral after his death-  even Muslim celebrities paying due obeisance.

Afzal Guru, whose complicity in a failed attempt to attack Indian Parliament in December 2001 ( no doubt inspired by the ‘success’ of  other Muslims in the US  on 9/11)  was not conclusively proved was hanged on ‘circumstantial evidence’ but to satisfy ‘collective conscience’ probably meaning public baying for blood. This helped to terrorise even further  India’s own citizens – already under some sort of siege by the army under a draconian law known as Armed Forces Special Powers Act – in the valley of Kashmir in the J&K state.

Compared to Islam and Christianity, Hinduism is supposed to be a tolerant religion (except to its own lower castes – the untouchables or Dalits) in which every god is a god. So there are secular but pious Hindus that keep a picture of Jesus or one of the Kaaba along with their deities in their home altar; many Hindus visit “Our Lady’s Church” in Bandra, Bombay seeking her blessings; cemeteries of dead Muslim saints known as Dargahs are visited by Hindus to beseech for favours. Shirdi Sai Baba (not the fizzy-haired one) , who enjoys the status of a God incarnation or is supposed to be God himself by Hindus was a Muslim mendicant before his status was elevated to divinity in early twentieth century. Some Muslim sects share that reverence to a lesser degree. Kabir, a fifteenth-century poet-mystic  is revered by both Hindus and Sikhs (and many Muslims)  as a saint for his verses calling for unification of both religions and citing their similarities . Sikhs and Hindus often live together; a Hindu patriarch often takes a vow to make the first offspring in the family a Sikh.

With such a high level of tolerant acceptance of other faiths, upon the assassination of Indira Gandhi by her Sikh guards, Hindus in the city of Delhi alone murdered over 3000 Sikhs with such violence that the number of beard-sporting Sikhs has become fewer in Delhi than in Toronto. Sikhs, in turn, practiced violence on their Hindu brethren – pulling passengers out of buses and shooting the ones without a beard.   Barely 7 months after the Sikh carnage, a militant section in the Sikh diaspora in Canada bombed  Air India Flight 182 killing  329 people, many of whom (268) were Canadian citizens, over Irish airspace.

A simultaneous bombing was attempted on Air India flight 301 in Narita International airport in Tokyo. Fortunately, the explosion happened before the passengers boarded the plane. The aircraft itself was destroyed. Quite a few among the Canadian and British Sikh population are still believed to  entertain ideas of retribution against India.

Kashmiri Pundits, the only Hindu population that lived in the valley known as Kashmir were, on 19 January 1990, terrorized by announcements from every mosque, to get out or face violent death. Some three hundred were actually killed, the rest took flight in Kashmir’s biting winter. Some 600,000 men, women and children were made to flee in one day, and most of them are still living miserably as refugees in the town in the planes – a Hindu-majority city called Jammu. The city carried a 43-year old memory of a similar number of Muslims being driven out to Pakistan – many were killed – during the partition in 1947.

In 1999, an army reconnaissance party of a Lieutenant and five soldiers from the Indian army were ambushed by Pakistan army and captured alive. They were tortured in gross contravention of Geneval convention, and the eyes of a few were gorged out when still alive. Their bodies were returned after a week. The government of India pleaded that it was bound by a previously signed an agreement that all military problems would be resolved bilaterally and no complaint will be taken to the UN.

In 2002 a train compartnment carrying Hindu volunteers who were returning to Gujarat  after celebrating the destruction of the Babri mosque caught fire at Godhra, a town in anchmahal disrict of Gujarat State in India. It was never proved whether Muslim extremists had caused the fire (considering the circumstances, it is quite a possibility) or the fire was for other reasons like someone cooking food inside. 59 voluntees died; 48 suffered burn injuries.  What followed was a carnage of huge proportions. According to official figures, 790 Muslims and 254 Hindus died; 2,500 people were injured.  In the state of vegetarian and non-alcoholic Gujarat which is also Mahatma Gandhi’s birthplace,  a former lady minister (who was later reappointed as minister by the current Prime Minister of India) roamed around in her official jeep exhorting Hindus to take revenge. The most heinous of the murders was orchestrated and conducted by the leader of a Hindu terrorist gang who ‘cut’ (his word)  and threw nearly a hundred men and women children into a well, flung tires and petrol over them – many of them still alive and pleading for mercy  – and set fire. That beat by a multiplier of a dozen the Tyre-necklace burning of political opponents in South Africa during the nineteen-eighties . A Muslim, who took refuge in a police jeep was handed over by the police, the protectors of the law,  to the same murderer with instruction to kill him.

The lead killer was sentenced by a conscientious judge to be hanged. A lady minister who went around in her official jeep exhorting Hindus to kill Muslims was awarded 25 years. Another man, whose crimes were probably more horrendous than the minister’s was given 31 years.

The leader  of the multiple pit murders has spent more time on bail than in jail; the minister has been released after twelve or thirteen years; and the one sentenced to 31 years is also free on bail, who, immediately on being released, raped and sodomized his Muslim wife. “Brother Narendra (Modi, who was the Chief Minister of the state then) changed judges three times till one gave me bail,” boasted the man. To prove the point, and in appreciation of his chief-ministerial role in the massacre, Mr. Modi was elected the Prime Minister, and the whole lot of the murderers are on bail, or have been set free. I see their freedom as a part of state terrorism under the dispensation of the  government. That hurts my conscience. I also foresee grave instability in India on account of the permissiveness if not encouragement by the government  of a small section of sabre-rattling and spiteful challenges by Hindu extremists against the minorities including the so-called untouchable class known as Dalits.

When he finished the killing spree, the leader said he felt like the ancient Rajput war hero, Maharana Pratap. “I don’t mind being hanged“, he told an interviewer; “But first I must go to that town where there are more than a hundred thousand Muslims and kill at least twenty to forty thousand.”

On the 4th  of March 2016, an eighth class drop-out  yoga teacher who had  suddenly become a business tycoon  under the new Hindutva governance shed his natural cowardice  and announced that he would cut the throats of hundreds of thousands if they refused to chant “Bharat Mata ki Jai” (victory to Mother India) which many Muslims refuse to chant under the impression that the words have a Hindu-religious connotation. A couple of years earlier a  young Muslim simpleton challenged “85 million” Hindus to a battle with “25 million Muslims” after removing the Police for just 15 minutes. Childish as these boasts may sound, they do instill paranoia in the common man which, in the first place, is the intention. With beef ban, cow vigilantism, intolerance towards the allegedly low-caste Dalits, imposition of Hindu forms of exercises named Sun-Worship (Surya Namaskar)  in certain states, terrorism in India could be just round the corner.

From the Muslim side,  there have been sporadic bombing in trains and city centres – though far more rarely than they happen in Pakistan. Muslims are only 13% of the population of India like the Blacks in America who, despite being quite inclined towards revenge, often suffer the  killings with loud but fruitless protests. Minor versions of Muslim Jihadi Johns have been springing up here and there, which is not a good sign for a Country that claims to be secular and tolerant. The ruling party has been intolerant towards Muslim celebrities for saying that India has become intolerant. At least 3 agnostic writers of repute were murdered during the last three years. Hindu version of Fatwahs were announced by jingoist leaders offering hundreds of thousands of rupees to those who would pluck the tongue of a young Dalit student leader, and even more money for his murder. A man was attacked for allegedly eating beef; a couple of others were waylaid under the suspicion that they were carrying beef in their food packets and beaten up. In some states there is a law banning slaughtering of cows  which lay dormant till the rise of the new dispensation. Muslim boys seen with or talking to Hindu girls are stripped naked and assaulted. Alleged love affairs between Hindu and Muslim young, or even between a high-caste Hindu and a low-caste, result in riots and murders. Honor killing  has become just as much a pride among Hindus in the Northern states as it has been among Muslims. Terrorism against women, prevalent all over the world, is a social norm in West and South Asia.

The attack on Bombay in November 2008    by ten armed men who smuggled in hiring an Indian boat (and killing the boatman) was engineered by  Lashkar-e-Taiba, an Islamic militant organisation based in Pakistan, resulted in the death of 175 people, including 166 civilians and 9 attackers. The surviving terrorist confirmed the involvement of LET, but Pakistan refused to take back the bodies , thereby not acknowledging its citizens. Ajmal Kasab, the surviving terrorist, was hanged while citizens were clamouring for his death.

In July 2005, in London undeergrround, the detonation of  3 bombs resulted in the death of 52 innocents. Of the four perpetrators, three were British-born sons of Pakistani immigrants.  Boston Marathon bombing in April 2013  was a sign that the evil spirit of terrorism against innocents is on the rise. The two young brothers who did the bombing later hijacked a civilian car and shot a police officer dead. Sporadic attacks by Islamic attendants are too many to mention. The Paris attack by suicide bombers hit a concert hall, a major stadium, restaurants and bars, almost simultaneously, killing 130 people and injuring many. Those who got away after the attack have been active in Brussels.  Earlier , in January 2015, the artists and staff of Charlie Hebdo cartoon magazine were killed in revenge for  a cartoon on their Prophet.

Islamic State needs to be put down firmly and its structure  destroyed. Terrorism training Madrasas in Pakistan should be forcibly closed down and the rookie Talibans (‘students’) de-indoctrinated  and dispersed. Other terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda, Taliban, Al Shabab, Boko Haram and a score of others need to be disbanded, destroyed and de-indoctrinated towards civilian life. This should also apply to Abu Sayyad in the Philippines, Ugyur extremists of Xinjiang province in China, and the Islamic extremist groups in Indonesia. The last, being from the largest  Muslim majority but largely tolerant country, has  unfortunately become the the largest suppliers of  Jihadi volunteers to the Islamic State. It is a pity that  brands of Hindu terrorism has been on the rise wherever Mr. Narendra Modi, despite all his secular postures since becoming the Prime Minister, continues to be a member of the extreme right wing militant RSS. Swamy Aseemanand, a repentant Hindu priest,  openly confessed: ” a series of blasts between 2006 and 2008 were carried out by Hindu outfits. The attacks targeted a predominantly Muslim town and places of Muslim worship elsewhere. Their victims were primarily Muslim. Yet the reflexive reaction of the police was to round up young Muslim men, torture them, extract confessions and declare the cases solved.” (reproduced ad verbatim from The Guardian.) Guardian further asks: “How do we describe attacks on churches, the kidnappings of pastors, the burning to death of a missionary? What do we make of the war-cry pehle kasai, phir isai: first the butchers (Muslims), then the Christians?”

The impression that killing for your religion is a great honour should not be allowed to be inculcated in young minds. Ideas such as the honour in honour killing, the contention that the female sex is an inferior being would need to be erased from Asian and African society – actually, from all the societies across the planet. Religious education, if a must,  should be confined to home; schools  and public places. One can sing the glory of his or her god or goddess in private; the gods hopefully do not crave for advertisements. Western Europe had taken several steps in that direction after the experiences of the second world war, but that scenario is changing with the admission of Arabs and South Asians – particularly Muslims – into the society. I fully agree with the Russian and Australian attitude towards immigrants – if you want to live with us, behave like the majority of us. Believe what you will, but observe the social norms of the mainstream society.

Even if this Utopian dream is fulfilled, there will be no absence  of terrorism in the world as long as weapon manufacture is big business. That is a sad thought to close this argument with.