Terrorism has no religion

The label of Catholic terror was never used about the IRA
Fundamentalism is often a form of nationalism in religious disguise

Karen Armstrong
Monday July 11, 2005, The Guardian

Last year I attended a conference in the US about security and
intelligence in the so-called war on terror and was astonished to hear
one of the more belligerent participants, who as far as I could tell had
nothing but contempt for religion, strongly argue that as a purely
practical expedient, politicians and the media must stop referring to
"Muslim terrorism". It was obvious, he said, that the atrocities had
nothing to do with Islam, and to suggest otherwise was not merely
inaccurate but dangerously counterproductive.

Rhetoric is a powerful weapon in any conflict. We cannot hope to convert
Osama bin Laden from his vicious ideology; our priority must be to stem
the flow of young people into organisations such as al-Qaida, instead of
alienating them by routinely coupling their religion with immoral
violence. Incorrect statements about Islam have convinced too many in the
Muslim world that the west is an implacable enemy. Yet, as we found at the
conference, it is not easy to find an alternative for referring to this
terrorism; however, the attempt can be a salutary exercise that reveals
the complexity of what we are up against.

We need a phrase that is more exact than "Islamic terror". These acts may
be committed by people who call themselves Muslims, but they violate
essential Islamic principles. The Qur'an prohibits aggressive warfare,
permits war only in self-defence and insists that the true Islamic values
are peace, reconciliation and forgiveness. It also states firmly that
there must be no coercion in religious matters, and for centuries Islam
had a much better record of religious tolerance than Christianity.

Like the Bible, the Qur'an has its share of aggressive texts, but like all
the great religions, its main thrust is towards kindliness and compassion.
Islamic law outlaws war against any country in which Muslims are allowed
to practice their religion freely, and forbids the use of fire, the
destruction of buildings and the killing of innocent civilians in a
military campaign. So although Muslims, like Christians or Jews, have all
too often failed to live up to their ideals, it is not because of the
religion per se.

We rarely, if ever, called the IRA bombings "Catholic" terrorism because
we knew enough to realise that this was not essentially a religious
campaign. Indeed, like the Irish republican movement, many fundamentalist
movements worldwide are simply new forms of nationalism in a highly
unorthodox religious guise. This is obviously the case with Zionist
fundamentalism in Israel and the fervently patriotic Christian right in
the US.

In the Muslim world, too, where the European nationalist ideology has
always seemed an alien import, fundamentalisms are often more about a
search for social identity and national self-definition than religion.
They represent a widespread desire to return to the roots of the culture,
before it was invaded and weakened by the colonial powers.

Because it is increasingly recognised that the terrorists in no way
represent mainstream Islam, some prefer to call them jihadists, but this
is not very satisfactory. Extremists and unscrupulous politicians have
purloined the word for their own purposes, but the real meaning of jihad
is not "holy war" but "struggle" or "effort." Muslims are commanded to
make a massive attempt on all fronts - social, economic, intellectual,
ethical and spiritual - to put the will of God into practice.

Sometimes a military effort may be a regrettable necessity in order to
defend decent values, but an oft-quoted tradition has the Prophet
Muhammad saying after a military victory: "We are coming back from the
Lesser Jihad [ie the battle] and returning to the Greater Jihad" - the
far more important, difficult and momentous struggle to reform our own
society and our own hearts.

Jihad is thus a cherished spiritual value that, for most Muslims, has no
connection with violence. Last year, at the University of Kentucky, I met
a delightful young man called Jihad; his parents had given him that name
in the hope that he would become not a holy warrior, but a truly
spiritual man who would make the world a better place. The term jihadi
terrorism is likely to be offensive, therefore, and will win no hearts or
minds.

At our conference in Washington, many people favoured "Wahhabi terrorism".
They pointed out that most of the hijackers on September 11 came from
Saudi Arabia, where a peculiarly intolerant form of Islam known as
Wahhabism was the state religion. They argued that this description would
be popular with those many Muslims who tended to be hostile to the Saudis.
I was not happy, however, because even though the narrow, sometimes
bigoted vision of Wahhabism makes it a fruitful ground for extremism, the
vast majority of Wahhabis do not commit acts of terror.

Bin Laden was not inspired by Wahhabism but by the writings of the
Egyptian ideologue Sayyid Qutb, who was executed by President Nasser in
1966. Almost every fundamentalist movement in Sunni Islam has been
strongly influenced by Qutb, so there is a good case for calling the
violence that some of his followers commit "Qutbian terrorism." Qutb
urged his followers to withdraw from the moral and spiritual barbarism of
modern society and fight it to the death.

Western people should learn more about such thinkers as Qutb, and become
aware of the many dramatically different shades of opinion in the Muslim
world. There are too many lazy, unexamined assumptions about Islam, which
tends to be regarded as an amorphous, monolithic entity. Remarks such as
"They hate our freedom" may give some a righteous glow, but they are not
useful, because they are rarely accompanied by a rigorous analysis of who
exactly "they" are.

The story of Qutb is also instructive as a reminder that militant
religiosity is often the product of social, economic and political
factors. Qutb was imprisoned for 15 years in one of Nasser's vile
concentration camps, where he and thousands of other members of the
Muslim Brotherhood were subjected to physical and mental torture. He
entered the camp as a moderate, but the prison made him a fundamentalist.
Modern secularism, as he had experienced it under Nasser, seemed a great
evil and a lethal assault on faith.

Precise intelligence is essential in any conflict. It is important to know
who our enemies are, but equally crucial to know who they are not. It is
even more vital to avoid turning potential friends into foes. By making
the disciplined effort to name our enemies correctly, we will learn more
about them, and come one step nearer, perhaps, to solving the seemingly
intractable and increasingly perilous problems of our divided world.

Karen Armstrong is author of "Islam: a Short History"
karmstronginfo@btopenworld.com

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