It has become part of western discourse to link terrorism with Arab culture and an Islamic cult of martyrdom. However, Islam is a religion, not a culture, and most of the people who live in the 'Islamic world' are not Arabs. Terrorism in Indonesia cannot be explained by cultural attitudes attributed - in a manner that when applied to other groups would rightly be condemned as racist - to Arabs. Suicide terrorism is not a pathology that afflicts any particular culture nor has it any close connections with religion. [...] The idea that wars are conflicts of civilizations - which emerged in the course of an American dispute about multiculturalism rather than as an attempt to understand international relations - is not supported by facts. [35] [...] The decisive conditions in producing long-term, large-scale terrorist violence are not cultural or religion, but political. Where these conditions exist, anyone can become a terrorist. [...]
The danger of Islamist terrorism is real, but declaring war on the world is not a sensible way of dealing with it. Except in a few countries - such as Saudi Arabia, Israel and Iraq - terrorists pose a security problem rather than a strategic threat. There is no clear enemy against which war can be directed or any point at which victory can be announced. As has often been noted, disabling terrorists is a type of police work that requires support from their host communities. It is not facilitated by futile wars in Islamic lands or by discriminatory policies targeting Muslims in western countries. While concentrated military action may sometimes be effective - as in the destruction of training bases in Afghanistan - conventional military operations are usually counter-productive. Enhanced security measures and continuous political engagement are the only strategies that have ever brough terrorism under control.
-Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia
by John Gray, pg. 175-179
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