2013

War flag of al-Shabaab

Islam and Terror

With another terrorist attack by Muslims in the news, this time in Nairobi, people are ready to criticize Islam or to defend it. On the left, people like to say that the terrorists are driven by geopolitical pressures and that Christians and other non-Muslims can be terrorists, too. On this side of the debate, it’s important to know that the iconic bomb-laden suicide vest was invented not by Muslims but by the secular Tamil Tigers. On the right, people point to the lines in the Quran that call for violence against infidels and that promise heavenly rewards for martyrs. Given the long history of attacks that Muslim terrorists have made against Western targets, it doesn’t take much evidence to get Westerners to associate Islam with terrorism. Human brains are good at pattern-matching, and people are quick to spot the pattern in these attacks. As is often the case, both sides are right.

The liberals are right that Islam itself doesn’t explain the motive for these attacks. There are countless regular people who happen to be Muslim but are no more prone to terror that you or I. Christians have considered Muslims their enemies ever since they expanded into Christian territory in the 600s. Today’s right-wing hostility to Islam is simply more of the same. Far from being a source of terror, Islam was instrumental in bringing stability, peace, justice, and learning to a culture that spanned continents and centuries. Americans as diverse as Thomas Jefferson and Joseph Smith admired Islam, which ironically is closer to Jesus’ unitarian religion than Christianity’s trinitarian theology is. If Islam isn’t a font of terror, where do these attacks come from? Nonreligious motives for terrorist attacks are easy to find in the history of the West’s mistreatment of Muslim people and nations. Muslims see their countries being threatened by the West on one level or another: by military force, through covert manipulation, or by Western media and culture. As the Tamil Tigers, the KKK, and other groups have shown, Muslims aren’t the only people who resort to extremism when their way of life is on the line.

That said, I can’t support the common liberal assertion that religion plays no role in these attacks. From the modern day all the way back to the dawn of humanity, religious behavior seems to establish tribal identity, especially to prepare the tribe for battle. Historically, religious rites have helped unite larger and larger tribes, then larger and larger nations, and finally entire empires. Religion helped warriors love the “tribe” so much that they would die for it. Sometimes warriors have been explicitly promised rewards in the afterlife, as with the Norse berserks, Christian Crusaders, Japanese kamikaze, and Muslim suicide bombers. The light side of religion is that it brings people together. The dark side is that in-groups often oppress or attack out-groups. If there is a religious motivation to a terrorist attack, that should come as little surprise.

If religion in general includes an element of warlike tribalism, Islam in particular is no exception. While Muhammad was known as a peacemaker, and he was merciful in victory, he was after all the commander of a conquering army. From Muhammad’s lifetime on, the doctrines of Islam have been used to bolster the courage of soldiers, inspiring them to fight the enemies of the faith. If Islam is being used to motivate revenge attacks against infidels, that’s partly the sort of thing that Islam was designed to do.

Like government, religion is a way that people coordinate their behavior, sometimes on a continental scale. As with government, people sometimes use religion for good, use it sometimes for evil, and usually use it for themselves. It would be simplistic to paint an entire religion as evil, but it would also be simplistic to consider it entirely innocent.