Columnists

Terrorism knows no race or religion

Sam-Makinda

Sam Makinda

Terrorism of the kind witnessed in Norway two weeks ago is terrible and needs to be condemned whenever it occurs, but we should remember that it is as old as human society and has been committed by people from many ethnic groups and from all the major religious groups.
There is plenty of evidence to show that in the past century, adherents to Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism, Islam and other religious groups have committed acts of terror against their perceived enemies. For this reason, the quickest way for any governments and international organisation to lose the fight against terrorists is to assume that only members of certain ethnic, racial or religious groups are capable of carrying out terrorist activities.
Moreover, terrorist tactics, strategies and goals, like those of governments, change in response to the available technology and the system of governance. For example, the 32-year-old Norwegian, Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 77 of his compatriots, must have selected his weapons and targets to suit the terrain.
Some terrorist groups in the past, such as the Baader Meinof gang in Germany in the 1960s and 1970s, the Red Brigade in Italy in the 1970s, and the IRA in the UK, tried to limit their attacks to particular states. Other groups, such as al-Qaeda, which bombed the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998, and al-Shabaab, have transnational links, which enable them to operate across several countries.
Following al-Qaeda’s attacks in the US on 11 September 2001 and the subsequent “global war on terror”, some commentators and policy makers have associated terrorism with Islam, but any serious analysis of terrorism will show that at various times, Africans, Americans, Arabs, Asians and Europeans have carried it out.
If security agencies used most of their resources to monitor threats from Muslims while ignoring other groups, they would render it easy for extremists in the ignored groups to plan and carry out terrorism. While some commentators have claimed the Norwegian intelligence agencies failed to view Breivik’s activities with suspicion because he is white with blond hair and blue eyes, I have no evidence to argue this was the case.
However, I was surprised by the readiness with which part of the media in Australia, the UK and the USA linked the twin terrorist acts in Norway to Islamic militancy even before investigations had started. For example, within a few minutes of the attack, the New York Times and the British-based Guardian newspaper online were claiming that Muslim extremists were behind the atrocities.
For example, the Guardian online on July 22 claimed that “a jihadist group is most likely to be behind the blast”.
The willingness of some of the media in the West to blame Muslims for terrorism whenever it occurs is not likely to lead to a mature debate on the primary causes of terrorism. If the root causes are not properly diagnosed and understood, the West is likely to have problems detecting and preventing terrorist acts of the type carried out in Norway two weeks ago. One of the best ways forward is to assume that, as terrorism has no race, ethnicity or religion, any credible counter-terrorism strategy should avoid scape-goating any particular racial or religious group.

Makinda is a professor of terrorism and counter-terrorism studies at Murdoch University, Australia.