The history of terrorist violence reveals that the Sicarii and Zealots’ struggle against the Roman occupation of Judaea during the 1st century CE was the first recorded organised terrorist campaign against Roman occupation. However, the Roman governor Antonius Felix used this terrorist group to assassinate Jonathan, the Jewish High Priest who had criticised Roman corruption and advocated for Jewish autonomy. Contemporary Zionist terrorism continues to derive its inspiration from the Sicarii and Zealots. It is good business for American defence industries today. It creates the conditions to access and occupy natural resources in the Middle East and the Arab world.
The terrorism of the ten Crusades between 1095 and 1291, which killed more than 20 million people by the Christians, was known as holy war, religious expeditions, and military campaigns to protect the holy land from the Muslims. These Crusades were financially beneficial for the Catholic Church as it mobilised funds to finance the crusades through religious donations, increasing taxes (the Saladin Tithe), and controlling trade routes. The crusades continued as long as they were profitable. Deaths and destitution of civilians did not stop the crusades, but they were stopped because they became financially draining, and the growth of Muslim unity also led to higher costs of men and money for the crusaders. The end of the crusades did not stop the violence. Christian missionaries played a major role in European colonialism and apartheid, which continued the violence of colonial governance in the name of modernisation.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s Education for Justice, University Module Series on Counter Terrorism, Module-1 Introduction to International Terrorism does not cover the Crusades as a form of terrorism while discussing the history of terrorism. The UN agencies continue to represent the racist history of Europe as civilisation and hide its barbaric death cults during the Crusades in the name of Christianity. Instead, they begin the history of “terrorism” by defining the French Revolution as the ‘Reign of Terror,’ which fundamentally undermines the progressive revolutionary achievements of the people who reclaimed their rights and liberties through their revolutionary upsurge. It looks as if the module is designed to shape a narrow narrative on the history of terrorism that suits European and American ruling classes by focusing on the terrorist attacks of 11th September 2001 only.
The UN module presents anticolonial struggles and Vietnam’s struggle for self-defence within the same narrative of terrorism. Such a narrative considers ‘socialism, communism and nationalism’ as sources of terrorist violence. This politically driven conceptualisation and narrative around terrorism is not only reductionist but also part of the reactionary politics that breeds colonial, capitalist and imperialist violence on an everyday basis in the name of democracy and human rights. It fundamentally ignores how European ruling classes imposed the terror of two world wars on the world population. The UN module on terrorism talks about the terrorism of Al-Qaida and the Taliban, but it does not reveal how Yankee imperialism of the US provided all kinds of support to these terrorist networks and then spent two decades, men, money and material to fight it in Afghanistan before handing it back over to the Taliban. The terrorist assassinations of targeted political leaders by the Isma’ili Shia Muslim sect during the 11th and 13th centuries are well recorded, the Shia and Suni terror on each other creates a myth of muslim monopoly of terror over others, but the UN module does not cover them. Such selective scholarship is a political project that upholds the interests of the ruling elites of Europe and America, who produce and reproduce violence in different forms.
In the name of fighting terrorism, counter-terrorism strategies have shaped the idea of security states which not only monopolise violence but also deepen the structural violence of the state as normal. Like terrorism, the counter-terrorism strategies of security states breeds profit like a regular business. Such a reactionary equivalence has been naturalised to control resistance and domesticate the democratic rights of citizens in order to uphold the interests of capitalism and imperialism—the twin forces of European and American ruling classes, which continue to pursue violence as a tool of governance and world domination. All other world religions, from Hinduism to Buddhism, carry inherent tendencies of structural violence to inflict fear among their followers and use religion as a tool of ruling elites to govern people. Buddhist violence in Sri Lanka and caste violence among Hindus in India are painful examples of religious violence where the state follows a majoritarian path to deepen different regimes of violence on minorities, atheists and people who differ and disagree with the ruling elites.
Similarly, Korean beauty in the form of multi-step skincare produces conditions to normalise the commodification of women’s bodies and beauty for profit. The routinisation of cosmetic use to uphold patriarchal beauty standards destroys natural beauty and replaces it with commercial beauty at the cost of women’s bodies. Such a process of structural violence is further normalised with the rise of clinical K-beauty, which requires aggressive laser and radiofrequency treatments and medical procedures that involve enduring huge physical pain for cosmetic changes in the body to look flawlessly beautiful. Beauty is promoted as an essence of religious purity and economic success by the advertisement industry of capitalism to promote the cosmetic market. This violent process is normalised by the cosmetic markets for profit at the cost of women’s bodies. The demand for the culture of compliance in religion, the beauty industry, terrorism, the counter-terrorism state, and market forces is not only common but also comes from the common ancestry of fear and desire. Therefore, there is the rise of South Korea’s famous “tal-corset” (escape the corset) movement against such a violent profit-making system of patriarchal capitalism.
Like Korean beauty products, terrorists, counter-terrorist forces, and violence come in different shapes and sizes, but ultimately, they are used as tools of governance which produce profit for the capitalist class and destitution for people. Religion and all other forms of violence are good business, breeding profit for the governing elites of a patriarchal and capitalist society. Profiting from the ‘fear of god and violence’ and the ‘desire to be rich and beautiful’ has become the twin foundational norm of capitalism, where religion, state, and markets work together to undermine individual creativity, freedom, and survival. Patriarchy, religions, capitalism, and imperialist states are the four sources of violence, used as a business model based on fear and desire. Therefore, the struggle against capitalism is not merely a simple struggle against the capitalist economy. Human survival and peace depend on the collective resolve of human beings against all religions, all forms of violence, terror, market forces, and the patriarchal and racial capitalist states.
