Crime and terrorism - Essay Example

Kashmir, including both Indian and Pakistani sides, is today one of most volatile and heavily militarized zones in the world. By now "jihad" (holy war) has become a familiar term in the Western countries; JEM claims that it runs schools of Jihad to indoctrinate and recruit youngsters. And at times JEM's motivation seems to expand in scope to become an all-out war with India desiring even to take control of India's capital Delhi by spreading terror, all this quite apart from J&K (SATP, 2001). JEM gets its people and financial resources from the militant groups Harakat ul-Jihad-i-Islami (HUJI) and Harakat ul-Mujahidin (HUM).

JEM had close ties to Afghan Arabs and the Taliban. Supposedly, Osama bin Ladin backed and supported JEM for a period. 2. Behind the various political agendas, a common and higher purpose unites all Islamic militants. And it is based on a religious belief. The Muslim terrorists themselves have openly proclaimed their motivation to be their religion. People generally tend to downplay religion-based motivation out of regard and tolerance for a faith practiced by hundreds of millions of people all over the world.

However, Islamic brand of terrorists are different from other kinds of terrorists, in that most of them are fervently pious and God-fearing. It is only natural to conclude that in whatever they do, their motivations ultimately spring from their belief system and religious conditioning, more than from mere individual psychological impulses. Islam totally discourages individual and independent thinking, and nurtures complete submission to its dogma in its followers. Though middle-class and more liberal-minded people in Muslim countries and Muslims in the Western countries are not likely to come under its sway to any significant degree, people in economically backward regions are much more susceptible to fundamentalist indoctrination.

The Koran promises paradise in the after life for martyrs in its cause and the cause of Islamic nations. The allure of abundant rewards in a future world stirs the passions of the youth in these terrorist-breeding countries, and spurs them to drastic, violent and suicidal actions (Johnson, 2002). Paraphrasing Karl Marx's famous statement in The Communist Manifesto, we can say that these young people who get converted to the ways of terrorism have nothing to lose except their miserable lives, and literally everything to gain when they properly lose the one thing they have.

This impressive lack of the most basic human instinct of survival, this positive embracing of death is what makes these terrorists so potentially deadly. The ferocity and fanticism of their faith makes them fearless and virtually unstoppable, thus causing desperation to the leaders and soldiers of India, Israel, the USA and most other Western countries who are determined to uproot terrorismIslamic terrorism is here to stay. It is a deep-rooted problem. To combat it effectively, one has look beyond the military and intelligence arenas, and aim to address the problem through social change.

It is a long-term strategy, of course, but in the long run only this is going to help. During the Renaissance in Europe we have seen how irrational and dogmatic religion loosens its hold on the