The Role of Personal and Cultural Identity in Religiously and Ethnically Motivated Terrorism within the Middle East

It would be easy to argue that the Middle East is an enclave of bad lack form a religious, ethnic and geopolitical perspective. A few centuries ago, the Middle East was the source of light for a world ridden with the vagaries of the Dark Ages. However, in the last few decades, the Middle East has become a center of death, suffering, and misery. Terrorism has become the order of the day for many nations, spanning over half a century. In some cases, states and governments sponsor terrorism to fight real and imagined enemies within or outside the region (Byman, 2005) . Exporting terror has resulted in some of the most powerful nations of the world viciously attacking some of the Nations in the Middle East, a good example being Iraq and Afghanistan. In a bid to defend themselves or fight back, segments of the populace have resulted in even more terrorism, resulting in a vicious cycle of terror (Chaliand & Blin, 2016) . One has to wonder how one of the most peaceful and harmonious regions in the world became such a terrorism hotbed, a question that this research paper seeks to answer. The instant research paper will focus on the two primary areas of religion and culture to try to explain why terrorism has become an integral part of the Middle East. On the one hand, the research paper will evaluate the religious perspective by evaluating the kind of terrorism emanating from inter-religious and intra-religious differences. Examples of interreligious terrorism include terror pitting Muslims against its fellow Abrahamic religions Judaism and Islam. Similarly, there is intra-religious terrorism, mainly putting different sects within Islam such as Sunni against the Shia. On the other hand, the paper will evaluate the ethically-based terrorism between the different ethnic groups in the Middle East. A good example is terrorism pitting Arabs against Kurds or Arabs against Persian. As this research paper will reveal, the Middle Eastern Communities are not vicious or violent people. Naturally, their personal, social and cultural identities tend towards peace, cohesion, and togetherness that has lasted millennia. However, internal strive mainly driven by external forces that take advantage of religious or ethnic differences have come together to transform a peaceful people into a hotbed of terrorism . 

Background Information 

Overview of the Middle East 

The Middle East is a collection of seventeen countries, most of which are in Asia alongside a few European and African Nations. Among the non-Asian nations in the Middle East, including the European nation of Turkey and the African nation of Egypt. The population in the Middle East is about 400 million people in Iran and Egypt being among the most populous while Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are among the smallest and least populated nations (Dudley, 2018) . The human development index in the region varies exponentially. Some of the nations such as Bahrain, Qatar, and the UAE have some of the highest per capita incomes in the world. Cities such as Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait City, Istanbul, and Riyadh are global centers. However, the region also has some of the poorest communities in the world spread across nations such as Afghanistan, Syria, and Palestine (Dudley, 2018) . Similarly, the nations are also convoluted form a political perspective with some places such as the UAE enjoying elongated periods of political stability. Other regions such as Palestine have been technically at war since the 1940s while Syria is one of the most dangerous places in the world. The economic disparity and political convolution is an important component in the issue of focus in the instant research paper, terrorism. On the one part, it produces the candidates of terror, young men, and women who are angry and with little to lose. On the other, it produces the pecuniary capacity to perpetrate terrorism as it takes money to fund terrorism including training and arming terrorists (Dudley, 2018) . 

Cultural Background 

Culture is an important area of focus in the instant paper, from the perspective of how it acts as a bearing factor to terrorism. The cultural identity of the Middle Eastern communities stems from a combination of religious and cultural affiliation. It is important to note that religion is not a cultural affiliation per se. However, Islam is more than just an issue of faith as it dominates every aspect of the lives of the believer (Chaliand & Blin, 2016) . Islam determines how a believer will dress, marry, eat and live, all of which are components of culture. From a religious perspective, the Middle East is a cultural melting pot. For example, Jerusalem, an important city in the presumed point of origin and Holy City for both Judaism and Christianity. However, the golden dome, one of the most important locations for Islam is also in Jerusalem. As shall be outlined hereinbelow, the city of Jerusalem is primary to the advent and proliferation of terrorism in the Middle East. Despite the Middle East being a vital center for both Judaism and Christianity, the majority of the population is Islamic (Chaliand & Blin, 2016) . For over a thousand years, Muslims, Christians, and Jews had found a way of living in peace in the Middle East. For example in Jerusalem, Jew had lived in the Old City for over a thousand years, although Muslims controlled the entire region. Based on the above, culture and religion by themselves are not the main cause of terrorism in the Middle East. 

Ethnic Background: Religion Combines with Ethnicity 

As indicated above, ethnicity is at the center of terrorism in the Middle East through ethnic conflicts. One of the most vicious and terror-based wars in recent history was between Iraq, an Arab nation and Iran, a Persian nation (Byman, 2019) . The two nations got involved in a war of attrition that took a terror as opposed to a tactical perspective. The Iraq Iran War provides a powerful insight into the rise of fundamentalism in the Middle East. After all, Iran was the first nation in the Middle East that both the USA and the USSR. Therefore, the Iran of the 1980s mirrors most of the Middle East later in the 1990s. After abandonment by the Cold War power, Iran faced a well-equipped and efficiently trained Iraq arm as outlined in Gallagher (2015). Iran and its leaders turned to the only recourse available to him, religion. He combined the ethnic differences between his nation, made of Persians and the Iraqis who are Arabs with religious differences. The Secular Baath Party led Iraq while the Shi’a Muslims under the Ayatollah led Iran. Faced with mortal danger and potential defeat yet lacking the means to propagate a conventional war with Iran, the Ayatollah turned to Islamic fundamentalism. For example, according to Gallagher (2015) Mehdi Talati, a 15-year old Iranian boy once offered to clear a minefield by running through it. Medhi, now an Islamic scholar claims that he offered to do this out of his love for the Ayatollah. The article Gallagher (2015) also outlined incidences where young men Iranian men would charge Iraqi machine guns without weapons or any kind of protection. The powerful Iraqi machine guns would cut down some the young men to the extent that there would be no bodies to collect! Despite the carnage, tens of thousands of more young men would volunteer to charge machine guns or run through minefields! 

Conversely, among the state-based forms of terrorism included the Iraq government made up of Arabs attacking Kurdish communities who are non-Arabic with chemical weapons (Chaliand & Blin, 2016) . Once again, the ethnic attacks emanated from the rise of a power imbalance. A foreign party arms one of the ethnic groups, in this case, Iraqi Arabs leading then to attack their neighbors from a different race. It is important to note that Arabs, Kurds, Persians, and other Middle Eastern ethnicities had lived together for centuries in some form of harmony. Even when they fought, it was strategic warfare, not terrorism. One has to wonder what would drive these historical neighbors to the kind of attrition that informs the kind of terrorism to be found in the Middle East. Among the driving factors for this change is a combination of foreign interference and the feeling of helplessness. 

Personal, Social, and Cultural Identity in Religiously and Ethnically Motivated Terrorism within the Middle East 

Terrorism has been a common feature in the Middle East combining both terrors committed within the region and acts of terrorism exported from the region to different corners of the world including the USA . The Middle East has created headlines for all the wrong reasons in the wake of world infamous terror groupings such as the Al-Qaida, Taliban, and the ISIL (Dudley, 2018) . In perspective, these terrorist groups and Boko Haram of Nigeria were estimated to have caused the death of over 10,000 people in 2017 alone according to the Global Terrorism Index 2018 statistics. Primarily, the jihadist terror groups of the Middle East are estimated to be responsible for over half of the world terrorist deaths and acts of terror. Currently, the Islamic State and its terror group commonly dubbed the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has been at the center of local terror activities in the Middle East. The group’s members have also perpetrated terror in European nations and sparked fears of terror on a global scale. The Islamic State alone accounted for around 4,700 deaths in 2017 alone, making it the most notorious terrorist group that orchestrated organized and targeted terror activities around the world (Dudley, 2018).

While groups such as ISIL such as the aforementioned seem to be orchestrating the most notorious terrorist attacks, it is paramount for researchers to understand the social and cultural personal and individual role roles of people used by the terrorist groups as mercenaries to carry out terror attacks. The jihadists groups, in this case, use radicalized youths, mostly young men, to plant bombs and carry self-detonating bombs as suicide bombers (Hodges & Nilep, 2007). It thus creates a complex theory to understand personal radicalization. It is not normal for humans to get radicalized to the point of opting for violent death in order to perpetuate terrorism . Therefore, it is necessary to seek to understand the psychology behind radicalization, religious radicalization, and terrorism. The Islamic State, the Al-Qaida, and the Taliban all affiliate themselves with the different Islamic faiths, indicating that the role religion and cultural affiliation play in the religious and cultural role of radicalizing and influencing terrorism in the Middle East (Hellmich, 2012). Ideally, other than these three main terrorist groups in the Middle East, there are hundreds of other small groups that orchestrate bombings and assassinations in Syria, Pakistan, Somali, and Afghanistan (Dudley, 2018) . The Somalian based, Al-Shabaab is one of the notorious Islamic based terrorist groups killing people in the Somali capital Mogadishu, Uganda, and Kenya in different incidents of terror attacks.

The terrorist acts of these and other small organizations are a problem to the world, with many countries forced to issue travel bans and sanctions to some middle East residents and countries over the dangers the groups pose (Israeli, 2014). The problem has created political tensions in some places because of the sinister correlation between politics and the strength of the terrorist groups. Further, in some places like Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan, it is hard to differentiate between government agencies and perpetrators of terror comprehensively . Additionally, there are traces of international cooperation between these established militant groups through financial and logistical help to orchestrate organized crimes (Moghaddam, 2008). Sometimes, governments have been at the forefront of commissioning organizations, financing them, and later the groups detach and join a militant terrorist group. The issues raise a lot of political tensions across the globe and target economies such as the US have had to curtail the travel of civilians from seven countries in the Middle East as it tries to reduce the effects of terrorism (Bjørgo, 2005). These counter-terrorism measures tell a lot about the threat of terrorism to the world and the need to address the issue from the core of religion and culture because these are the roots of the construction of radicalized ideas that are imparted on young minds (Porges, 2017).

The Middle East culture is heavily embedded in the religious teachings and reading of the Islamic religion, which fosters Jihad wars on people who seemingly are not believers or adherents of the religion. The belief culture of the people makes it easy to have the people in the Middle east to easily fall prey to of the teachings of extremism. Through the misinterpretation of religious teachings of Islam for instance, the Sunni Muslim, upon which ISIS is based is one sect of the Islam Jihadist who takes advantage of the Holy Scripture to motivate acts of terror . The acts are justified by religiosity, and the recruits undergo a radicalization process that prepares them for christened terror attacks on non-Muslim states and their civilians (Bjørgo, 2005). In definition, Islam terrorist is seen as a group of terrorists who attack the western perspective of governance through democracy, a political system that most Middle East countries do not ascribe. A large number of Arabs in the Middle East such as Palestinians and Afghanis have endured endemic injustices for decades, a fact that breeds anger and bitterness. Other Arabs sympathize with their ethnic kin; hence share their anger and bitterness. The sponsors of terrorism take advantage of this anger and bitterness to drive radicalization (Bjørgo, 2005). The sociopolitical state of the countries from which these groups spring is ripe for radicalization and extremism and therefore, the gradual process of radicalization is easy to proliferate.

The Middle East engenders convolution from an intellectual perspective with some of its segments being among the premier centers of learning while others, more so the poorer sections only have limited levels of literacy (Bjørgo, 2005) . Normally, the affluent nations such as Saudi Arabia and UAE have intellectual centers while poorer sections suffer academic deficiencies . It is also undeniable that this phenomenon has led to a spark of religious driven attacks on western countries as the cultural difference creates a rift of economic and political differences between the two spheres of the world. Poverty, ignorance and a lack formal education is a systemic problem in some of the poorer regions in the Middle East (Bjørgo, 2005) . Instead of focus on improving education standards, some malefactors take advantage of ignorance to drive hate, anger, and bitterness then abuse these feelings to drive radicalization. 

In essence, the traditional aspects of the Arabic culture leave the minds of the young people trained to follow orders as given through the misinterpretation of Fatwa and other Islam teachings (Bjørgo, 2005) . The youth have no access to alternative pedagogy, and therefore they have become gullible to leaders who use their training as a way to proliferate hate for external influence on the Middle East regions. The position of the people is at risk, and further, the youth are positioned for any radical movement that they are open to learning from. Without any measures to change the radical tradition and cultural beliefs of the Arab Muslims, it is impossible to rule out the causes of extremism and terrorist attacks meted on people of a different religion. However, the historical perspectives only position the people for radicalizations and do not necessarily explain all the aspects of Islamist terrorism (Bjørgo, 2005) . The tradition only captures socialization and education in the Arabic culture and highlights the loopholes that extremist leaders use to recruit radicalized youths.

There are other theories and studies that show why the Middle East remains susceptible to corruption of the mind through brainwashing and teaching of absolutism in religion. The traditions of the Arabic Muslims are therefore a catalyst to the spread of contemporary terrorism attacks, although the ones who pursue the acts might be products of a system that has trained their minds to result to unmindful intolerance of other opinions, ideas, religions, and forms of government (Bjørgo, 2005) . In April 2011, a viral story of an American pastor who lit a Koran sparked a series of violent killings of foreigners in Afghanistan ( Porges, 2017). The incident is an obvious question of how the burning of a holy scripture causes uproar and violence in Afghanistan, yet it is not the lone country that has Muslims. In the report generated questioning the unprecedented violence, international observers noted with earnest the susceptibility of the Afghanistan people to violent extremism.

On the other hand, the Islamic groups of Taliban and Hizb-i-Islami played a critical role in sparking the violent reaction. The people were irate because of the single incident, which according to their faith affiliation warranted such a reaction (Porges, 2017). Even if the incident did not constitute physical combat against Muslims, the burning of the Koran amounted to an attack on Islam, thus calling for jihad. Whichever way the Afghani people decide to choose the jihad, it was clear that the people were looking for a loophole to cause terror since their attacks were not related to whomever they sought to fight against. The Taliban, upon realizing the anger the people in Afghanistan felt as a result of the incident, incited the people to act violently almost instantly (Porges, 2017). It is therefore apparent that the Afghanistan people were ripe for incitement either because of their religious background or from their personal views of the world and a shared ideology about terrorist acts justified by religion.

There are drivers to rampant and active radicalization and they include a prevailing ideology, shared grievances, and mechanisms to mobilize the people (Bjørgo, 2005) . For an individual, the most influential part is the ideology that one is indoctrinated to believe. However, not every country in the Middle East has high cases of indoctrination into terrorism. Countries such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar have lesser interruptions due to violent extremism, and these countries have one thing in common, have high human development indices . The vast oil business helps to maintain the peoples living standards, and with an opening Middle East, the people in these two emirates are finding it easy to access another form of education other than the religious-based ancient pedagogy (Porges, 2017). However, the case of Afghanistan is different. Even before the terrorism sparked by the Taliban and the invasion by the US, the country had been suffering under the tyranny of the government. The social inequalities in the economy were caused by rampant government corruption, the intellectual disadvantage on the people, and the widespread physical insecurity. With these conditions, the people of Afghanistan have common grievances against the government, and their daily mindset is frustrated because of pent up anger over their social statuses. These common grievances make it easy to incite the people against any system as long as there is a reason to cause havoc (Roshandel & Lean, 2013). Individually, the people are projecting their psychological state on the American and UN embassies because of the slightest provocation. In such areas, many young people are jobless and have no hope for a brighter future because of the prevailing conditions.

Additionally, with the pressure of better life elsewhere, the youth feel sidelined, and the only explanation they get is from leaders who are viciously imparting a wrong and outdated philosophy of ill-treatment. Terrorist group leaders are often seen as religious scholars with loads of money either acquired through corruption or terrorizing their people. In some places, terror is not a choice for the masses as radical groups force citizens to participate in terror activities. Afghanistan’s Taliban is an example of enforced terrorism (Roshandel & Lean, 2013). It is therefore apparent that the idea of terrorism is not often externally initiated, it is a movement that has been caused by the increase of poverty across the Middle Eastern countries such as Syria, causing the youth to result in violence. However, there is still the fact that individually, those involved in crime undergo a process of radicalization to believe in an ideology they are ready to die for. In the book 'Terror in the Mind of God', the author wonders, what ideology would make people kill innocent civilians, maim other people, destroy others and themselves all in the name of their god? (Juergensmeyer, 2017). The question makes sense in the context of radicalization because from various studies, and there are perfectly peaceable Muslim adherents who make up a more significant percentage. What then motivates the rest of the terrorist groups to seek retribution or look for redemption in an ideology that is destructive and outdated? Understanding a radicalized mind is not as easy as seen in the interview in the aforementioned book. The main suspect of the September 11 terror attack denies the responsibility of the act, even though the Taliban group to which he was an ardent believer, claimed responsibility. The suspect behavior questions the sanity of the terrorist act and the guilty conscious of those who perpetrate the evil (Juergensmeyer, 2017). Often, those who die in the act are not part of the biggest beneficiaries of the terrorist act; the beneficiaries are the leaders who wish to make a statement. For such leaders, greed for power and a corrupt mind is a straightforward assessment; however, for an individual who is promised virgins in the afterlife, the act is possible as a result of machination and brainwashing of the individual.

In one of the researches into why individuals are motivated to become radicalized Islamist terrorists, a former Taliban leader of education considers ideology as the main reason why recruits feel motivated to kill (Juergensmeyer, 2017) . The ideology in Islamist terrorist groups is similar, and the situation of the people who are recruited is broadly similar, considering the similar grievances of the people. The Taliban use the foundation of religion and brotherhood then abuses the resultant trust to radicalize the youth . As a young person, the group offers a place to live and people to depend on, mostly found in the teachings of brotherhood embedded in Islam. The person feels a sense of belonging, and the teaching teaches him to become a revolutionist to change the world and become what the Koran teaches, with all people being subject to Allah (Juergensmeyer, 2017). However, the individual is taught to hate those who have ostensibly changed the state of their country, attacked Islam, and therefore, the teachings call upon them to act. The religious rhetoric is also widely spread in mosques and other social gatherings to target any youths with the courage to learn more . Ideally, the religious rhetoric captures the attention of an individual who then joins a group such as the Taliban without fully comprehending what entails the further radicalization process.

The individuals who seek to join a movement that proliferates the religious rhetoric finally comes to the camp of the insurgent groups ready to go to the next level (Roshandel & Lean, 2013). The poverty-ridden backgrounds push the young people into the programs hoping to achieve something better for the sake of their religion. A person who has been brought up in an Islamic background, attended a school that teaches the Islamists pedagogy is often susceptible to the corrupt interpretation of the religious rhetoric, and the training after recruitment makes it permanent and real to the individual. The process through which these individuals undergo training of the mind borders on military training, although it is highly regarded as brainwashing (Roshandel & Lean, 2013). The brainwashing process involves re-educating the mind and programming it to think in a certain way without the option of independent thinking. For Muslim youth, this process is almost natural because the education received even from the informal settings of homes and mosques does not allow independent thinking (Moghaddam, 2008) . Brainwashing the individual thus becomes easy for the elite leaders of the terrorist groups, and within a short time, most of the recruited youths are ready for acts of violence as they seek retribution.

One of the reasons why the religious organizations that register mosques in countries such as Afghanistan fail to combat illegal use of the mosque for radicalization is the excess number of unregistered mosques. In Afghanistan, there are numerous unregistered Islamic organizations, most of which have international funding (Moghaddam, 2008) . Under the pretext of religious education, these organizations drive radicalization through a warped system of education . The religious centers remain the pivotal and most incriminating centers of Islamic radicalization. The unregistered religious centers are unregulated, and therefore the teachings that happen in these institutions are based on the owners of the religious centers as well as their objectives. With these critical institutions, individuals in Afghanistan are subjected to many opportunities of radicalization than the opportunities of practicing pure Islam. The neighboring middle eastern countries such as Afghanistan and Pakistan influence each other in term so radicalization as noted in several reports where most of the radicalized Afghanistan youths attended camps and mosques in Pakistan where the government and the social status of the people are equal if not more deplorable (Ruggiero, Sassaroli, & Latzer, 2011).

Some mechanisms proliferate the acts of radicalization on the youths from these regions. One key aspect that the leaders of the groups know is that most of these youths are illiterate, and thus any written material is used sporadically. Instead, the radicalization of the mind starts with insurgency songs and poems all of which are taught as part of Islam, to be understood and followed to the letter (Mumuni, 2014) . The songs are chanted and taught in the unregistered religious camps and given to individuals through DVDs and other multimedia players that are in Arabic. As for those recruited overseas, the content that is written is mainly used to target them, although this is a tactic that is easily traceable, thus not as popular as Arabic coded messages of insurgency (Mumuni, 2014). Indoctrination involves repeatedly chanting circumspectly worded messages that take advantage of the vulnerabilities of the targets such as poor young people . Sometimes, the leaders of these camps get experts at bombs and snipers, and these talents are highly valued, thus prompting better promotions within the group. In return, the rest are motivated to find their niche and to conduct recruitment and training of other people to earn respect in the terrorist groups. Out of these radicalized youths, many are sent to kill locally and in small groups as suicide bombers across Europe (Mumuni, 2014). However, there is a more significant threat of organized experts, terrorists with capabilities to camouflage and work for years in foreign countries in the process of staging mass killings.

To put everything about Islamists terrorism into perspective, analysis of one of the greatest tragedies in the hands of Islamists terrorism is an adequate way to place each claim in place. The events of September 11, 2001, in the United States is one of the most notorious and heart-wrenching account of Islamists terrorism against the US. The attacks killed nearly 3000 people including all the 19 militants who hijacked a series of planes directed at the World Trade Center buildings and the Pentagon (Cooley, 2002) . The attack shows the use of organized crime through suicide bombers who were elusive enough to get into the US undetected. When the Al-Qaida claimed responsibility for the attack, it was clear that the Islamic insurgency had been planning the attack for a long time and it was a success in their eyes. The militants used in the attack die in the crashes and little is known about their reward. Indeed, it is clear that these were people indoctrinated into the teachings of hating the West and agreed to carry out a suicide mission (Cooley, 2002) . Eventually, the then leader of the Al-Qaida group Osama Bin Laden emerged as a significant critical leader in the group and most of the supporters of the group and similar ideologies adored him until his death (Stampnitzky, 2013). Within a few years after the attack, the US had neutralized the Al-Qaida and most of the mosques and areas notorious for radicalization diminished (Ensalaco, 2010). However, terrorism, just like the counter-terrorism plans change and one of the most considerable changes was the growth of ISIS. However, with many countries flagging terrorism, there is a reduced number of deaths resulting from Islamists' terrorist attacks (Bakker, 2015). However, the Arabic tradition is still in place, and there is little or no progress in changing the way the Arabic Muslims view the world. The countries that practice absolute faith in Islam are notorious for radicalization to date as is the case of Syria that is the headquarters of ISIL, one of the remaining influential terrorist groups. However, the counter-terrorism attacks used in the modern age have seen fewer lesser deaths each year coming from Islamist terror attacks.

However, on September 11, 2019, the leader of the Al-Qaida group a former surgeon Al-Zawahiri released a message of hate to the Islam world telling them to target the US mainly because they too were hunting them down (Al Jaazera, 2019) . The aspect shows that religious leaders are often intellectuals with enough money to live lavishly and remain in control of the illiterate youths. Additionally, the leaders are using appealing religious rhetoric up to date to proliferate radicalization of the Muslim community. In the recent video, there is a slight change of tactics as the leader called for attacks on the American military instead of innocent civilians. He opines that there is no reason to hit the enemy, in this case, the US, using innocent civilians when the American armies are all over the Muslim countries (Al Jaazera, 2019) . The same appeals used to propagate hate and seek retribution are redundant in the tactics employed by all groups of Islamist terror groups.

Discussion

What Triggered Ethnically Motivated Terrorism within the Middle East? 

There are many theories seeking to explain the advent of terrorism in the Middle East, both in terms of Middle Easterners attacking one another and sponsoring terror around the world. One of the most controversial but potentially accurate grounds for the advent of terror in the Middle East is how the West went about planting the great state of Israel in Palestine (Azar, 2003) . It is important to admit that this issue of controversial as some elements have used it to raise the erroneous argument that Israel should not exist. Much of the land that now forms the core of Israel has been Jewish land for millennia. Unfortunately, the handling of the advent of the current nation of Israel that triggered most of the cultural and religious acrimony currently abused by purveyors of terrorism (Kurtz, Michael & Siboni, 2018) . 

At the end of the Second World War, the region that Israel and Palestine now stands, simply known as Palestine at the time, was a British Colony. Jews and Arabs lived side by side including in Jerusalem itself without much strive (Kurtz, Michael & Siboni, 2018) . The British came in, divided Palestine by carving Israel out of it. The division also left Jerusalem shared between the Arabs and the Jews. It is important to note that at this time, the issue between Arabs and Jews was purely ethnic and had nothing to do with religion. The Arabs protested the taking away of their land without proper consensus building. Instead of negotiations, what Israelis called the War of Independence, also knowns as 1948 Arab–Israeli War ensured (Kurtz, Michael & Siboni, 2018) . The war planted animosity in the Middle East, with Jerusalem becoming a divided city, as Israel controlled one side and the Arabs the other. Tens of thousands of Palestinians also became refugees. 

1948 Arab–Israeli War did not precipitate terrorism in the Middle East but it created a path to the same. The path to terrorism involves a proxy war between the Soviet Union of the one side and the Western Powers on the other (Kurtz, Michael & Siboni, 2018) . The Soviets supported the Arabs while the Western World supported Israel. Two massive wars followed the first being the Six-Day War of 1967 and the second the Yom Kippur War of 1973. In both wars, Western-backed Israel not only won but also took a lot of erstwhile Arab territory including the whole of Jerusalem, part of the Sinai desert and the strategic Golan height. The sequence of events outlined above finally planted the seeds of ethnic terrorism in the Middle East primarily pitting Arabs against the Jews and their western allies (Kurtz, Michael & Siboni, 2018) . 

What Triggered Religiously Motivated Terrorism within the Middle East? 

The ethnic grounds for terrorism above were potentially also religious grounds since most Arabs are also Muslims but the main genesis of Islamic-based terror was Islamic fundamentalism. The source of Islamic fundamentalism has a close correlation to the Cold War proxy war in the Middle East (Azar, 2003) . Muslim fundamentalism mainly grew in Iran and Afghanistan before spreading to the rest of the Middle East. It is important to note that before the advent of the proxy war, both Iran and Afghanistan were primarily secular countries and thriving cultural centers in the Middle East (Cooley, 2002) . The two would gradually precipitate into centers of Islamic Fundamentalism. In Iran, the US government supported a despotic government spearheaded by the Shah of Iran. The general idea behind supporting the flawed Shah was to prevent Iran from falling under the geopolitical control of Communist Russia. The excesses of the Shah of Iran led to the radicalization of the Iranian Muslim population leading to the Iranian Revolution (Byman, 2019) . Among the first examples of suicidal Islamic fundamentalism that now Mark Middle East terror appeared in Iran during the Iran-Iraq War. At the time, the USA was a close ally of Saddam Hussein leaving Iran isolated and fighting for survival. On the other hand, Russia attacked Afghanistan in 1979 and ravaged the country in an elongated and bitter conflict. Once again, America did not want Russia controlling Afghanistan so it sent material support to the gradually radicalizing Afghanis. For ten years and with American help, the Afghanis managed to frustrate Russian and prevent its armed forces from taking over their country (Cooley, 2002) . Then in 1990, the Soviet Union fell, the Cold War ended and both America and Russia no longer needed the Middle East for their proxy war. However, in the course of the Proxy War, the Middle East had gradually developed massive ethnic animosity (Azar, 2003) . In the course of the proxy war, Islamic fundamentalism had spread. In the course of the said proxy war, the Middle East became highly militarized. The radicalization, militarization and religious/ethnic animosity eventually precipitated into terrorism. 

Conclusion 

It is evident from the research and analysis that religion and ethnicity play a crucial role in modern terrorism in the Middle East. However, the role of religion and culture in the terrorism resulted from the weaponization of both religion and ethnicity to fight proxy wars within the Cold War. The proxy war created animosity between Judaism and Christianity on the one hand and Islam on the other mainly due to the crisis in Palestine. On the other hand, the Islamic fundamentalism grew inter alia due to the crisis in Iran and the war in Afghanistan, both of which were battles within the Cold War. Americans and Russians respectively armed and instigated different sections of Middle Easterners to fight against one another in furtherance of the cold war. Later, the two global powers ended their cold war and left, leaving an ethnically and religiously divided the Middle East. The result is a few rich Middle Easterners who are capable of funding terrorism. On the other hand, there are tens of millions of poor, bitter and angry citizens of different nations who have historical grudges they are willing to ventilate through terrorism. Similarly, a radicalized form of Islam exists for the proponents of terror to use to incite the poor to propagate terrorism. Ethnicity and religion are just tools used to ventilate historical injustices most of which came about at no fault of the Middle Easterners. As evidenced by the research and analysis above, the blueprint for ethnic and religious terrorism in the Middle East lies in the Iraq-Iran War. The main difference between the two nations is ethnicity as Iraq is mainly Arabic while Iran is mainly Persian. However, in the war, Iran found itself helpless against Iran leading Iranian leaders to radicalize the youth. The radicalized Iranian youths formed suicide gangs as reflected in the research above. Herein also lies the solution for terrorism in the Middle East. This solution lies in proviso of justice for the communities, elimination of poverty, and the mitigation of helplessness. 

References 

Al Jazeera. (2019, September 11). Al-Qaeda leader urges attacks on the West on 9/11 anniversary. Retrieved from https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/09/al-qaeda-leader-urges-attacks-west-911-anniversary-190911170040478.html . 

Azar, K. (2003). Causes of Terrorism.  IU South Bend Undergraduate Research Journal ,  6 , 1-8. 

Bakker, E. (2015).  Terrorism and counterterrorism studies: comparing theory and practice . Leiden University Press. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/norwich/detail.action?docID=3433519 .

Bjørgo, T. (Ed.). (2005).  Root causes of terrorism: Myths, reality and ways forward . Retrieved from https://ebookcentral.proquest.com 

Byman, D. (2005).  Deadly connections: States that sponsor terrorism . Cambridge University Press. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/norwich/detail.action?docID=237564 

Byman, D. L. (2019, January 24). The Iranian revolution and its legacy of terrorism. Retrieved from https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2019/01/24/the-iranian-revolution-and-its-legacy-of-terrorism/ . 

Chaliand, G., & Blin, A. (Eds.). (2016).  The history of terrorism: From antiquity to ISIS . Univ of California Press. 

Cooley, J. K. (2002).  Unholy wars: Afghanistan, America and international terrorism . Pluto Press. 

Dudley, D. (2018, December 5). The Deadliest Terrorist Groups in the World Today. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/dominicdudley/2018/12/05/deadliest-terrorist-groups-in-the-world/#7ce6f6ba2b3e 

Ensalaco, M. (2010).  Middle eastern terrorism: From black September to September 11 . University of Pennsylvania Press. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/norwich/detail.action?docID=3441638 . 

Hellmich, D. C. (2012).  Al-Qaeda: from global network to local franchise . Zed Books Ltd. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/norwich/detail.action?docID=765177 

Hodges, A., & Nilep, C. (Eds.). (2007).  Discourse, war and terrorism . Retrieved from https://ebookcentral.proquest.com 

Israeli, R. (2014).  War, peace and terror in the Middle East . Routledge. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/norwich/detail.action?docID=1656150 . 

Juergensmeyer, M. (2017).  Terror in the mind of God: The global rise of religious violence  (Vol. 13). Univ of California Press. 

Kurtz, A., Michael , K., & Siboni, G. (2018). Six Days, Fifty Years: The June 1967 War and its Aftermath. Retrieved from https://www.inss.org.il/publication/six-days-fifty-years/ . 

Moghaddam, F. M. (2008).  How globalization spurs terrorism: The lopsided benefits of" one world" and why that fuels violence . Praeger Security International... ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/norwich/detail.action?docID=554322 . 

Mumuni, A (2014).  Global Terrorism and its Effect on Humanity , Wsgf Pty Ltd,. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/norwich/detail.action?docID=3120952 

Porges, M. L. (2017, November 15). Radicalization Processes in Afghanistan. Retrieved from https://ctc.usma.edu/radicalization-processes-in-afghanistan/ 

Roshandel, J., & Lean, N. (Eds.). (2013).  The moral psychology of terrorism: Implications for security . Retrieved from https://ebookcentral.proquest.com 

Ruggiero, G., Sassaroli, S., & Latzer, Y. (Eds.). (2011).  Perspectives on immigration and terrorism . Retrieved from https://ebookcentral.proquest.com 

Stampnitzky, L. (2013).  Disciplining Terror: How experts invented'terrorism' . Cambridge University Press. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/norwich/detail.action?docID=1139704 . 

Gallagher, M. (2015, September 26). The 'beauty' and the horror of the Iran-Iraq war. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34353349 .