3/16/15: THE 8 WORST TERRORIST GROUPS

The self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, as well as their new ally, a Nigerian terrorist group, Boko Haram, have been all over the news recently, and if you've been paying attention, you've heard the horrible, inhumane, and barbaric things these people have done---all of which is done in the name of religion.

But ISIS and Boko Haram aren't the only terrorist groups that have shook the world with their overly-violent strategies of getting religious and/or political views across. There's numerous other groups on this list that are up with ISIS's and Boko Haram's spots and some have done worse. 

8. al-Shabaab, also known as "the Youth," are al-Qaeda-allied religious extremists in Somalia, urging for an Islamic state in their country. Fortunately, they've been weakened over the years, but Somalia being a crippling anarchy, they still have quite a lot of power. Originating as a smaller group as part of al-Qeada, since their beginning they've taken control of much of Somalia, even maintaining the capital most of the time, and have, much to people's fear, started to spill into southern neighbor Ethopia, with their most infamous attack in September 2013 on a mall in Nairobi, killing 67 people and injuring 175. 

7. FARC, or the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People's Army, is a different kind of group on this list, for that they use military tactics, such as terrrorism, to push their socialist ideologies, hoping to overthrow the government with an agrarian society (a society basically where everyone's farmers) without an empire. Although they haven't been in the news in recent times, they still exist, holding themselves together with kidnappings-with-ransoms, illegal mining, and drug trade. 

6. Tehrak-i-Taliban Pakistan, or the Pakistani Taliban, is more of an organization than a group, as they're made up of multiple small groups with the same ideologies of fighting for Pashtunwali---traditional Pashtun lifestyle---and Deobandi fundamentalism---a movement of Hanafi Islam, a school in Sunni Islam that's very strict on blasphemy---and generally around the Afghan-Pakistani border. They're the monsters behind the 2009 Camp Chapman attack---a suicide bombong of a CIA facility around the border that killed 10, the 2010 Times Square car bombing attempt---an attempted bombing in Times Square that failed when two people discovered the car bomb, which failed to blow---and a 2014 massacre of the Peshawar school in Pakistan, killing 132 kids. 

5. Hezbollah, along with Hamas (a Palenestinian group in West Bank), is a militant group and political party in Israel's northern neighbor Lebanon that is strongly against Zionism and Western ideologies, and these Shi'a Muslims hate Israel, forming after Israel attempted to invade Lebanon in 1982 as a resistance. Ever since, they've been able to take part in the Lebanese government and grown into an organization, such as the group above, and using terrorist strategies in order to try to get Israelites out of Lebanon to this day and fight for their Anti-West views, with suicide bombings, kidnappings, car-bombings, and even plane hijackings. 

4. The Taliban are the terrorist group that continued the United States's active conflict in Afghanistan since we'd entered in 2001. They're Islamic extremists with the same ideologies as the Pakistini Taliban (who actually followed their ideologies) and have been trying to overthrow the Afghan government and create a fundamentalist Islamic state. Although the United States have weakened them, they still are a group. The same brutal, bloodthirsty group that's massacred civilians---including an ethnic cleansing on the city of Mazar-i Sharif in 1998 that left thousands dead, destroyed towns, trafficked humans, oppressed women, and have plundered, bombed, raped, and kidnapped there way to an infamous stardom. 

3. Boko Haram, a branch-off group of al-Qadea like al-Shabaab and now a part of ISIS, is an Islamic terrorist group mostly stationed in Nigeria, but have also spread into Chad, Niger, and Cameroon. They're most known for their kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls in April 2014 (the #BringBackOurGirls campaign), but have also massacred civilians and raided, plundered, and destroyed towns, kidnapping and bombing along the way, such as the 2015 Baga massacre, Cameroon raids, and the Chad attacks. 

2. The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or just the Islamic State, is a terrorist organization who basically want to make themselves the heads of all Islam worldwide and are fighting to form a fundamentalist Islamic state. They've unfortunately been pretty successful so far and are by far the richest and most powerful terrorist group, or at at least Islamic extremist group, in history. They've raised, plundered, destroyed towns, massacred people, ethnic cleansed, kidnapped and raped women, tortured prisoners, beheaded and executed people on camera, and have even been found trafficking organs and enlisting child soldiers. They're basically your worst nightmare. 

1. al-Qaeda is an Islamic terrorist organization that, contrary to numerous lists, is my top spot for the worst terrorist group in world history. As much as ISIS and Boko Haram and all these other terrorist groups are horrible monsters of people, no one stands a chance against al-Qadea. Although they've been heavily weakened and broken up over recent years, they were the ones to really start it all, and led by Osama bin Laden, have killed the most amount of people than any group on this list, with their most infamous attack ever being the September 11, 2001 attacks, which killed around 3,000 people and destroying the World Trade Center. They may not be relevant anymore, but the they're the granddaddys of terrorism and will forever remain in our hearts and memories as the worst terrorist group to mankind.