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Religion and Public Disclosure
Religion and Public Disclosure
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A news article published in 2002 by Public Broadcasting Services (PBS) explores
the relationship between religious militancy and terrorism. The article outlines terrorism as one
of the religious challenges facing the Middle East. PBS claims that religion has been weaponized
to mobilize individuals into extremism, leading to terrorism. Despite religious groups having less
military capabilities to kill, unlike governments, their influence, garnered from dedication and
unpredictability, gives them immense power1. The article states that religious extremism arises
when a fraction of the community feels threatened or challenged in their belief. Challenges are
often political, economic, or cultural and not necessarily religious in any form. The region is
experiencing various non-religious challenges that negatively impact the people’s living
Religions have been used by various terrorist groups to justify their conducts. Most of
these groups go mistreating, harassing, and even killing people in the name of their particular
religions. This has continued happening all along and it has now become a norm of most of these
groups.
For instance, A Zionist settler from the orthodox community of Qiryat Arba stormed the
crowded Ibrahim Mosque in the biblical town of Hebron on the West Bank on February 25,
1994, during Islam's holy month of Ramadan. Before being beaten to death, he discharged three
30-shot magazines into the assembly of 800 Palestinian Muslim worshippers killing 29 and
wounded 150. The attack was primarily a result of two opposing religion movements (Zionist
and Islam), in which, the Zionists did not see it as a big deal attacking, destroying and killing
1
Juergensmeyer, Mark. Terror in the Mind of God. University of California Press, 2017, 4.
2
Public Broadcasting Service, “What is Religious Militancy and its Relationship to Terrorism.” PBS. Last modified
2002. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/globalconnections/mideast/questions/militant/index.html
Religious violence has been is increasing on a daily basis. We view pictures of terrorism
in different times, days, as well as places. This happens in buses, social places such as schools,
market areas, and even in hotels. The pictures are of bodies ton to shreds by these terrorists.
Some of these bodies might be of people whom we are closely related or whom we have lived to
know for a long time. This creates a sense of fear among the members of that community where
the attack took place. For instance, the bombing that occurred at Baghdad, Belfast, and Jerusalem
made the people of these cities have a feeling of betrayal in that personal security and order that