Original post by SeeloweYou don't seem to be able to grasp what I'm saying. Without the religious aspect, these political motivations would not lead to terrorism at the rate they do. Without a belief in Martyrdom, and of divinely sanctioned violence, far, far fewer attacks would happen. Without the promotion of the murder of kuffars, infidels and the like, these attacks would not happen at the rate they do. That's why these attackers yell, "Allahu Akbar", and claim to carry these attacks out in the name of Islam. Are they lying? I say, no.
If you want to see the worst purely political terror can do, look at the Dublin and Monaghan bombings, or the King David hotel bombing, or the Norway Attacks. These killed 33, 91 and 77 people respectively. These events are rare, and supported by relatively few people. Now look at the worst religious terror can do, the Orlando Massacre, the Brussels Bombings, the Paris attacks, or the Nice attack. These attacks killed 49, 32,130 and 85 people respectively. All of these occurred in Western nations, and all occurred in the last 12 months. If we look to the East we see countless Islamic terror attacks reaching 100+ victims, the worst being the Karrada bombing, and related smaller attacks.
ISIS's goals derive from a desire to establish an Islamic caliphate across the Middle East, based on the principles of Salafist Islam. They aim to convert or massacre Shia Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, atheists and other minorities in the are. No doubt they intend to murder homosexuals, oppress women and follow Sharia law. None of these have any political benefit, yet they are subscribed to by not only ISIS, but other Jihadi groups across the Middle East, and many, many civilian sympathisers. To claim their motives have little to do with religion is utterly ridiculous, for most of the foreign and domestic policy of Muslim NATION STATES is based upon Islamic doctrine. Of course the various jihadi groups across the world are inspired even more by religion to commit these heinous acts.
You must also note that most Islamic societies oppress many groups of people. Homosexuality still carries the death penalty in many areas of the Islamic world, and Islamic doctrine guides laws. The Muslim world is, politically, a few hundred years behind everyone else. Most Muslims in the world disagree with Western ideas of liberal democracy, freedom of religion, speech and sexuality, etc. Etc.
Even in Western nations they hold bigoted beliefs at a higher rate than other groups.