Hate is not the underlying cause for Terrorism

Image by TheDigitalArtist/Pixabay.

Less than two weeks after terrorist attack in Manchester, there was another terrorist attack. This time the target is London.

The time has come for us as a civilization to examine the cause behind these attacks. Now, you might think that we have done so, but we actually haven’t. And why? Well, mostly it is because people do not want to be labeled Islamophobic.

By MIH83 / Pixabay

The arguments that Religion should not be even looked at do not help our society stay safe. There are right now a huge amount of tweets and Facebook posts with people claiming that religion has nothing to do with it, without having a slightest clue about who and what the attackers even are. Now isn’t this insane?

Yes, the most immediate cause for these attacks is Hate. But Hate does not come from nothing. There needs to be an explanation and a cause for it.

You do not simply hate somebody without any reason whatsoever. Atheists are aware of the dangers of all religions. All we ask is that Religion is not so easily dismissed as a possible source of this hate.

It is naïve to ignore the possibility that it can be religion. It might turn out not to be, but with people being afraid to even ask the question, we might never know. And we can't afford not to know. Lives are at stake. The risk of offending an ideology is a small price to pay.

It seems almost certain that they ARE Muslim extremists. They are the people who took the absolute worst of the religion and decided to live by it. It happens. They have told us this many times. And there are a huge amount of cases where moderate Muslims were convinced to leave their lives in the West and join ISIS, simply because they liked how ISIS was interpreting the religion. This does NOT mean all Muslims do this or are capable of doing this. But it does mean that modern Muslims need to condemn what they do.

Denial doesn't help Christians, Atheists, Buddhists and least of all moderate, modern Muslims who are possibly the biggest victims of ISIS. But the first step is acknowledging the possibility that it might have something to do with religion.