It's interesting to see Sikh terrorism in the West in the 1980's is not being treated the same as the terrorism of Muslims today.
It's lazy and intellectually dishonest to brush away Western foreign and blame the religion of Islam for terrorism.
If there is enough perceived injustice created by politics
to form a stimulus, anyone can be led to extremism or radicalism. Religious
affiliation is by the by. The examples are numerous - animal rights activists
and environmental activists have been known to employ radical and violent
methods of protest. Even those fathers campaigning for the rights to see their
children have gone to the great lengths of scaling the heights of Big Ben and Buckingham Palace . Thus, we must assess what it is
that leads to political radicalism in all of these scenarios, rather than
unfairly and unjustly dismissing any analysis where Muslims are concerned
because it is easier just to blame Islam.
Muslims are one of the most sizeable minority communities in
the Western world. Present Western foreign policies have doubtlessly created
deep anger and, in the rare instances, violent reactions. In the past, the
Irish have trodden this path, and if such erroneous foreign policies were
shifted to other communities, the response would be no different. An example is
a movement by some followers of the Sikh religion living in the West and
committed to a concept similar to the
Ummah. Theirs is a campaign to establish an independent Sikh homeland,
Khalistan, on present-day Indian territory .
This movement has used Western territory since the 1980s in an attempt to bring
about this aspiration.
On 23 June 1985, an extremist from the group carried out a
lethal aviation explosion by planting a bomb and blowing up an Air India 747 en
route between Toronto and Bombay . The aeroplane fell into the sea east
of Ireland ,
killing all 329 passengers. On 26 May 1987, there was an attempt to assassinate
an Indian cabinet minister on Vancouver Island, and in May 1986 a Sikh was
arrested in New York for conspiring to blow up
an Air India jumbo jet leaving New
York City . These examples should serve to
differentiate between religion and violence, for there is no justification for
blaming the Sikh religion for the actions of some of its followers.
Islamic Political Radicalism - A European Perspective, Edited by Tahir Abbas, The Scales for Defining Islamic Political Radicalism - Ismail Adam Patel, Edingburgh University Press, p 50-1
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