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The Latin word Radis or roots means buried at the root of fundamental. It shows that a radical is a person who wishes to bring the fundamental, political and social change and therefore radicalisation is a mindset by which people adopt extreme views and beliefs, being prepared to take violent measures for political and religious gains.
Wilner and Duboulos define radicalisation as: Radicalisation is a personal process in which individuals adopt extreme political, social and religious ideas and aspirations and where the attainment of particular goals justifies the use of indiscriminate violence, it is both a mental and emotional process that prepares and motivates an individual to pursue violent behaviour. It is interesting to note that radicalisation does not always lead to violence in the initial stages. So, a slow process of radicalisation may take place while there is no realisation of the gravity of the situation.
In contemporary discourse of religious radicalisation, religion is often believed to be at the centre of ones radicalisation. Radical ideas are instilled in common people, who have very little understanding of their own religion, in a way that they consider them absolute. Religious radicalisation can be defined as a process by which a person or group comes to adopt increasingly extreme religious ideas and aspirations that reject or undermine the status quo, or rejects and or undermines the contemporary ideas and expressions of freedom of choice. Robert Mandel refers to religious radicalisation as, an increase in and or reinforcing extremism in thinking, sentiments, and or behaviour of individuals and or groups of individuals.
Alex Schmid, quoting Dalgaard Nielsens study, came up with six stages of the process of religious radicalisation: [1] Identifying a problem as not just a misfortune but an injustice; [2] constructing a moral justification for violence (religious, ideological, political); [3] blaming the victims (it is their own fault); [4] dehumanising the victims through language and symbols; [5] displacing responsibility (God or other authorities ordered the individual to commit the act of violence) or diffusing responsibility (the group, not the individual is responsible); and [6] misconstruing or minimising the harmful effects (by using euphemisms or contrasting to other acts which are worse).
Now, the question is, what is the name of the religion of terrorists?
The Political methodology is their religion, whether it is called Political Islam, Right wing, left wing, religious extremism or ethno-nationalism. All these groups create political violence in order to achieve their political ends.
The political methodology is actually a religion, the religion of the terrorists aims, the religion that provides them a valid justification to take others lives. Terrorists use the religion as a political ideology to be dominated in the world whether it has a religious background, nationalist background, white supremacy or political power game. What is the religion actually? It is a combination of beliefs or faiths that individuals possess inside his/her minds. For example someone believes in communism and he/she can even give up his/her life to achieve certain benefits from that ideology, so, if this is the case; he/she worships such ideology or the creator of the ideology. The communism became a religion for communists who blindly follow the ideology of communism.
After three years of hard efforts, education and experience, I am able to present this most valuable knowledge to my readers about global terrorism and violent extremism. The slogan Terrorism has no religion, which we are listening and reading everywhere, but one thing I am convinced is that Indeed Terrorism Has a Religion.
Whenever, I present my idea that Terrorism has a religion, I get strong criticism, especially from my Muslim community. Their argument is that Islam is a religion of peace; therefore, terrorism has no room in Islam. I do not have any doubt that Islam has no room for terrorism or violence, however, Muslims do use the name of Islam in relations to create violence and mischief. Therefore; I have no other option except to declare that Terrorism Has a Religion.
In the last few years, I was assessing the entire world, what is happening in the world, who is doing what and what are the reasons behind these bloodied wars and violence that lost millions of lives. I came to the conclusion that Humans have always used violence to get power, either in religion, in politics, in countries or among the nations. Humans want to rule over people by hook or crook. So, they changed the peaceful ideology into violent ideology and started spring fire in the name of whatever is their political or religious ideology.
In my forty plus life, I had many changes in my faiths such as a religious extremist, a secular believer, Marxist/socialist activist and now a moderate religious promoter. I have enough personal life experience to assess the religious and political extremism. I have travelled from Pakistan to Afghanistan and to Kashmir, a journey from pro-Jihadist to anti-Jihadist.
Some people have theoretical knowledge of what terrorism is and how to counter it and some people have practical experience of what extremism is and how to counter radicalisation. I have both knowledge of it as I spent some time in Afghanistan and Kashmir with Jihadists and participated in some violent clashes and have also studied counter-terrorism at ICT- Israel. So, in this scenario, I can sense from miles what terrorism and extremism are and why or/how an individual becomes radicalised.
People need to understand that hateful and violent ideology is generating a variety of messages in their mind process. This is a pure violent psyche that needs to be cured by positive and cognitive mind process with nonviolent messages. Therefore, I have put more light on the ideological process so that when it changes, it can be returned to its original peaceful shape.
