Impact of terrorism and political violence on sacred sites

Over the last decade there has been an increased terrorist attacks on sacred sites and on individuals travelling to perform pilgrimage. Religious terrorism is a type of political violence motivated by an absolute belief that religious faith has authorised and commanded terrorist violence. Religious terrorists often use mass destruction as an agenda to make a politically motivated statement. Religious sacred sites suffer the most from risk of mass destruction. Terrorist organisations commit violent actions including assassination, murder, and destruction of religious sites in order to achieve their goals. ISIS and other groups often loot artefacts from sacred sites to sell them in black market in order to raise funding for their terrorist organisations. The destruction and looting of heritage sites, which are recognised as war crimes. The effects of such destruction are beyond their financial value, when these sites are destroyed, the history, the religious sentiments and the culture of a society is also destroyed. This paper evaluates and analyses different expressions of terrorism destruction of sacred sites with particular reference to the atrocities carried out over the last decade and analyses the motivations and terror philosophy of the perpetrators behind the terrorist attacks. Keywords: Religious Terrorism, religious tourists, sacred sites