Terrorism : Facts Versus Myths

Contents: Introduction. 1. Terrorism and Muslims. 2. Islamic tag. 3. Terrorist violence and religion. 4. Clash of civilisations. 5. War on terror. 6. Islam and violence. 7. Democracy and Islam. 8. Islam and fundamentalism. 9. RSS and terrorism. 10. RSS fights against terror. Appendices: i. A moment of silence. ii. War crimes tribunal in Afghanistan. iii. International tribunal on war crimes in Iraq.  iv. Civilizations: clash or alliance. v. Al Qaeda or Al Fayda. vi. ABC of Jihad in Afghanistan. Bibliography. US military intervention. References. Further reading.

"The current times are full of insane acts of terror. All over the globe and also in India, acts of violence by political groups seeking "justice" or "revenge" are dime a dozen. Not a day passes when one does not hear about the death or innocents in one more such act in one or the other corner of the globe. Many a time one can make the correlations, which tell us the cause of terror and the underlying group involved.

The attacks on Afghanistan, and later on Iraq, were followed by acts of terror in Madrid and in London. All these countries, incidentally, were the ones which had been allies of US in its brutal invasion of Iraq.

Defining "terrorism" is not very simple. Various interpretation and definitions of terrorism have come up in recent times. States have generally focused on talking of terrorism in terms of acts of violence and death of innocents at the hands of non-state actors. In popular parlance, in some regions and in some circles, such acts of terror are legitimized as acts of political campaign. LTTE, ULFA, IRA, ETA and the Kashmiri militants, who have been labeled as "terrorists" in their respective countries, are regarded as "freedom fighters" amongst a section of people in the same areas."