My plan to end religious terror and violence and achieve lasting peace by JM

In order to designate a plan and put a resolution together, we must first come to the realization of what religious terrorism is and what it has done to the world as a whole.  We must walk down the path to the historic realms of terrorism and decide what is the best way for religious violence to disappear.  Religious violence is a tough subject to talk about, but all in all we must face it, that since September 11, 2001 religious violence has not yet been put to rest.

The meaning of religious terrorism is the public acts of violence at the turn of the century for which religion has provided the motivation, the justification, and the organization of the world's view.  Religious terrorism is considered to have been lurking around for quite some time now and has an ethnic identity that has become the most important of all security challenges.  The most popular religions that evolve terrorism and violence are those of the Jewish, Muslim and Buddhist religions and occur mostly because they tend to keep track records of previous disastrous and violent acts.  . Religious terrorism has had an effect on all political, social and global changes throughout the world.

Religious violence springs from a desire to find a clear purpose in the confusion of a world dominated by American capitalism.  Fundamentalism fills the “God-shaped hole” in secular modernity.  Terrorist groups emerge in response to sociopolitical grievances, using religion to enlist desperate individuals who justify murder in the guise of martyrdom.  Believers sublimate feelings of rage and hopelessness in the blissful experience of a divine-sanctioned mandate to avenge the perceived oppressor.  Terrorism is less a military target than a powerful idea (Stern, Jessica. Terror in the Name of God: Why Militants Kill).  In a global war most targets have been chosen citizens from other countries and nations. They are usually supporters of Pakistani, Egyptians, Palestine, Sudanese, Algerians, Indonesians Malaysians and Filipinos.  These wars are meant globally around the world for everyone to see so that they are viewed as a “war against the world.”  They are meant to make a powerful impact on the public and to receive the attention globally so that religious nationalism becomes culturally restricted.  These kinds of war suggest an all or nothing struggle against an enemy who is determined to destroy what they have longed to destroy for some time.  “No compromise is deemed possible.  The very existence, of the opponent is a threat, and until the enemy is either crushed or contained, ones own existence cannot be secure.” (Juergensmeyer, Religious Terror and Global War)

Juergensmeyer obtained three common things regarding attitude within a violent religious movement.  The first he explains is how terrorists reject the compromises with liberal values and secular institutions that most mainstream religions have made, be it Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Sikh or Buddhist.  Second, radical religious movements refuse to observe the boundaries that a secular society has set around religion – keeping it private rather than allowing it to intrude into public spaces.  Third, these movements try to create a new form of religiosity that rejects what they regard as weak modern substitutes for more vibrant and demanding forms of religion that they image to be essential, to their religious origins (Juergensmeyer, Religious Terror and Global War).  

     Within the occurrence of Bin Laden’s cadres, the authority of religion has given a moral legitimacy of employing violence in their assault on the very symbol of economical power.  It has provided a metaphor of cosmic war, an image of spiritual struggle that every religion has within its repository of symbols – the fight between good and bad, truth and evil (Juergensmeyer, Religious Terror and Global War).  A system of symbols in the use of a cosmic war and religious violence entail cultures that are in some form of battle against struggle.  They continue warfare because they cannot live up to the struggle, therefore not being able to control it.  Such struggles are battles against the most chaotic aspect of reality: death and all that is able to control death: disorder, destruction, and decay (Juergensmeyer, 161,162).  By evoking and then bridling images of warfare, religion has symbolically controlled not only violence but also all of the messiness in life (Juergensmeyer, 161).  
Juergensmeyer identifies culture to be the ideas of social groupings that are related to terrorist attacks and that also follow an ethnical and social value to a specific social unit. Religious violent acts come from biblical myths of the bible, religious organizations and legends from the past that have not yet been completed.  For example, the Sikh tradition uses violence within the images of weapons, and blood, Christianity follows their religious violence through the word of God and the bible while Muslims follow the notion of the Jihad.   The idea of violence in Islamic culture is justified by force although the means are to be of non-violence and peace. (Juergensmeyer, 80)  Islamic belief is a call on for forgiveness, love and tolerance, but if Muslims are aggressed against, then force of violence will be used to put an end to the aggression. (Juergensmeyer, 80)  According to Juergensmeyer, violence is a form of punishment sometimes in the means of defending a faith.  He explains that outside the Muslim world, force and violence are a means of cultural survival and the survival is through the existence of the jihad, which is defined as striving to get through a "holy war."  Unfortunately, "the jihads by Islamic law does not allow it to be used for personal gain, or to justify forcible conversion to the faith: only conversions regarded as valid are those that come about non-violently through rational suasion and a change of heart."  (10/04/2005: paragraph 1 Juergensmeyer, 81) 
Religion has played out a major role in both a culture of violence and in terrorism because it is a characteristic that is being used throughout all different faiths and is causing key destructions among many people and places in the world.  “It takes a community of support and, in many cases, a large organizational network for an act of terrorism to succeed.  It requires an enormous amount of moral presumption of the perpetrators of these acts to justify the destruction of property on a massive scale or to condone a brutal attack on another life especially the life of someone whom they scarcely know and against whom on bears no personal enmity.”  (09/12/2005: paragraph 1 &2 Juergensmeyer, 6)  
In order to end religious violence, we as Americans must first learn how to accept the flaws on all sides of a religion.  All religions must learn how to get along in a worldly fashion and learn how to avoid violence.  Everyone must come together and speak freely about what the problem is and somehow come up with an idea of compromise on how it can be worked out.  We must learn how to respect the beliefs and values of other religions and by any means try to consider the families and children of the people who are dieing.  Everyone needs someone to love and someone to support them in life.  Everyone needs someone to stand by and to hold in the middle of the night.  But, if these wars continue on, than many people will be losing out on these charitable moments in life.   People of different cultures must not bring up there children in an environment where violent encounters take place.  They must teach their families to love and respect people from other religions.  There are so many other ways to get personal and moral satisfaction in life.  It’s okay to be dedicated to a religious group, but not one who uses violence to solve its troubles.   I believe that the scenarios in the book “Terror in the Mind of God,” have deciphered many important resolutions for defeating religious violence.  Of course many may be more of importance than others, but the necessary means to destroy religious violence stems from the government and the society as a whole to try and stop these acts.  As Americans we are willing to fight until the end.  We don’t want to continue to hurt others, but unless terrorists are able to control themselves and stop hating the American people the sooner we can all be part of a happy world.  Once we become a happy world, then the world can come in peace at last.  There are no more words that can resolve religious terrorism.  The only way is to compromise and if no one is willing to do this than there never will be peace on earth.  There is no guarantee that making peace in the world will work for everyone, but there is always that one minor chance that just maybe it could.  This would change the lives of many people today and make most of the worries fade away.  
Although terrorism is the main focus throughout the world, we must be careful and consider that those who believe in the violence of religion are still out there somewhere waiting to condone more violence against the world, but those who do believe in a specific culture are not always out to get you either. (09/12/2005: paragraph 1 &2 Juergensmeyer, 6)  
Work Cited


Stern, Jessica. Terror in the Name of God: Why Militants Kill

Juergensmeyer, Mark. Religious Terror and Global War.

Juergensmeyer, Mark. Terror in the Mind of God. University of California Press. Third Edition. 2003.