Terrorism cannot be linked with individual religions: PM Modi

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has dubbed terrorism as a 'thought process' which should not be linked with individual groups or religions, adding that the first step towards countering terrorism should be passing the United Nations Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism.

"I think terrorism is a thought process that is a great threat to the international community. I am also not linking it to any particular religion or to the actions of religious leaders. The countries that believe in human values need to come together and fight as a collective and not looking at individual groups from the perspective of individual religions," the Prime Minister was quoted as saying by the Time magazine.

"I think as a first step what the international community can definitely look at is passing the United Nations Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism which has been with the United Nations for the last several years. I think that could be the first step for us to take," he added.

The Prime Minister also said that terrorism should not be addressed in segmented voices, but one voice and that religion needed to be 'delinked' from terrorism.

"We should address this problem in one voice, not in segmented voices... I think the other thing that we need to undertake as a focused measure is to delink terrorism from religion," he said.

"It would also help us additionally to isolate the terrorists completely who tend to use this interchange of arguments between terrorism and religion," he added.

The Prime Minister also said that the entire international community needs to come together and put a complete stop to access of the terrorist groups to finance their operations through money laundering, dirty money, deal dealing and arms trafficking.

"We have to look beyond individual groups. The international community needs to look at this problem from a larger perspective and not from individual perspectives," he added.