In 2013, Europe did not have a single terrorism attack, classified as ‘religiously inspired’.
In the newest Europol statistics about terror attacks in Europe (2013), it says:
‘No attacks explicitly classified as religiously inspired terrorism, right-wing terrorism or single-issue terrorism were reported by the EU Member States in 2013. ‘
We are talking about 152 attacks, of which 24 are classified as left-wing and 84 as separatist (organisations like ETA, PKK andsoon); 44 not specified.
But looking at the arrests, the statistics about the explanation from the criminals themselves, we see that from the 535 persons arrested for the 152 attacks, 216 declared they were ‘religiously inspired’.
Now, in the summary on Europols homeside, it says: ‘The terrorist threat in the EU remains acute and diverse. The largest proportion of terrorist attacks in the EU was related to separatist groups, although the number significantly decreased in 2013 compared to previous years. Most separatist incidents, however, were small-scale. The majority of EU Member States continue to consider religiously inspired terrorism as a major threat, as evidenced by the significant increase in the number of arrests.’
If you first conclude that you cannot classify THE ATTACK as ‘religiously inspired terrorism’ then why not stick to that conclusion? Why replace objective truth with subjective truth by taking the explanation from the one you arrest (‘I was religiously inspired’) seriously?
Isn’t about time to stop the fairytale that terrorist attacks would have anything to do with religion? Statistics show it, research shows it (for example, suicide attacks, they are not motivated by religion, but by being oppressed), common sense tells it, so why continue?
The full version of the TE-SAT 2014 can be downloaded from the Europol website; citations in this article are taken from ‘Annexes’.
https://www.europol.europa.eu/content/eu-terrorism-situation-and-trend-report-te-sat-2014