V. Terrorism


The World had seen since the 1970s a development of terrorism by religious groups. Outside the Middle East this is easily presented as inherent to Islam. Such anti-Islamic stereotyping is easily reinforced by the rhetoric of some extremist Islamist movements like Al-Qaida and its leader Ben Laden, who calls for an indiscriminate use of violence against all who collaborate with the “apostate” regimes in the Islamic countries and against their Western allies and the Zionists. Ben Laden call them Apostate because they do not have Islamic rule.
As sad as these acts of violence perpetrated by the extremist Islamist groups can be, I would like to point out to a fact: The incidence of political violence by groups invoking religion is by no means specific to Islam: Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism have all been invoked by those using violence from below and above. In Northern Ireland, Christians of two sects – Catholics and Protestants – have invoked religion to justify their crimes. In Israel fanatic Jewish groups have advocated violence by the Israeli State when it has suited them, and independently when it has not. Baruch Goldstein, who killed 29 Palestinians in the Hebron Mosque in 1994, claimed to be doing the work of God. In India, there has been an ominous rise in the use of force by Hindu chauvinists groups, to terrorize their Muslim and Christian fellow citizens.
There is a misuse of the term terrorism for polemical political purposes: On the one hand, to delegitimize not just the actions but the very program of political groups who mobilize Muslim people, on the other hand, to confine discussion of terrorism only to Muslim States. The Middle East has seen terrorist actions from above – by states acting in the name of Islam, like Egypt, but also by Israel and by secular regimes in Turkey. In his A Clash of Civilization, Huntington argues that “Islam has bloody frontiers”, he does not however provide an accurate account of where the responsibility for this bloodiness may lie in Bosnia, Kosovo, Palestine, Kashmir, etc… (cf. Fred Halliday, Nation and Religion in the Middle East).
Long before 9-11, since the 70s and 80s, the issue of terrorism had been taken out of context and has been exaggerated and distorted. I do not mean in any way to detract from the moral and human seriousness of the terrorist phenomenon. There does, however, seem to be a tendency to inflate and distort the question. The USA had since some time ago made much of the issue and presented it as a unitary, worldwide threat. Governments in the Middle East have also made much of the issue to discredit their opponents, and conceal their own uses of political violence, domestically and internationally. Israel has long done this, in an attempt to discredit the Palestinian cause: Benjamin Netanyahu, in particular, made a career out of self-serving demagogy about “Terrorism”. Arab governments have also used the issue of terrorism to justify their own repressive policies, and to identify all political opponents with the cause of political violence. The Turkish government has used the term “terrorism” to justify its refusal to develop a political solution to the Kurdish question. There should not be legitimate criticism of the use of political violence by opponents of a state if it does not permit a full and open examination of the right to rebel, and of the conditions under which such a right may apply. The castigation by governments of the USA, Israel, Egypt, or Turkey of “terrorist” opponents may not always be without justification. In their usage, however, it precludes assessment of actions in which they and their clients have been involved.
The use of the term “terrorist” today, especially with the “War on Terrorism”, is very often used to denote any liberation movement or nationalist movement of which states or people in the West or Israel disapprove. Today, among Muslims, it is especially the Palestinians fighting for their land and the Iraqis, who are the most considerate by the US administration and Israel as Terrorists and this is for obvious reasons.
What is really striking is although a lot has been said about the causes of “Islamic terrorism”, nothing of this has been taken into consideration, in the USA or in the Islamic countries themselves to put an end to this problem. Using force against those terrorists has been seen as the only valid solid solution to the problem, although I think that repression and crushing will just add to the problem. Violence always brings violence, and the present “Islamic” terrorism itself is a result of some inflicted violence.

VI. Conclusion


After having gone through some of the anti-Islamic misconceptions relating Islam to violence and terrorism, I will conclude on a more peaceful note.
Every one speaks today of the need for peace, thanks largely to the modern military technology, which has brought the horrors of war to an inconceivable level. But there is also an innate yearning for peace in the soul of human beings. One might ask why this innate yearning for peace. Islamic teachings have a clear answer to this question, one that clarifies the concept and reality of peace in the Islamic context. In the Quran, God refers to Himself as “As-Salaam”. Peace. For Muslims, God is Peace and our yearning for peace could be nothing more than our yearning for God.
For Muslims, only religion is able to take them to the “Abode of Peace”, which is ultimately paradisal reality and Divine presence. Over and over again the Quran identifies peace with the paradisal states. And the greeting of the dwellers of Paradise will be: “Peace be unto you”. And for you too peace be unto you.