#444: To Defeat Terror, We Must Fight Islamophobia

 Fearing or blaming Islam for terrorism only cultivates more terror.

As the mass murders pile up, more people are tempted to blame and fear Islam. We hear Ted Cruz proposing we accept Christian refugees but not Muslims and Donald Trump calling to ban even Muslim tourists. And a poll shows New Hampshire voters' paranoia: 53% of Trump supporters favor a "Muslim database," and 49% want to shut down mosques.

Others, like Catholic columnist George Weigel, are more subtly paranoid. Weigel claims that attacks in Paris and elsewhere target “crusader nations” regarded as enemies of the true religion, Islam.  Terrorists killed those who embody “the West,” he thinks--even though many attacks have been in Africa and Asia and Russia. Weigel says terrorists attack due to “religiously-warranted convictions”--as if Islam justifies such attacks.  He says they kill innocents whom they considered “infidels”--even though many victims (even in Paris) have themselves been Muslims.  He asked for prayers for “the ultimate defeat of the evil that he is Jihadist terrorism” by every legitimate means.

Meanwhile, Brown University’s Stephen Kinzer argues that “terrorism and mass migration are bitter results of outside meddling” by colonial and neo-colonial powers--and he predicts they will intensify.  “Interventions multiply our enemies,” he writes, since every act “produces anti-western passion” that can be radicalized into the “thirst for bloody revenge.” Killing such militants backfires: “killing creates more, not fewer” of them.  So retaliation by European and American forces hands the terrorists what they want: to trap us in the quicksands of the Middle East.

So who’s right?  Is Islam to blame, and we must use “every legitimate means” to kill all the “jihadist murderers”? Or is colonial history behind this, and we must find another solution?

Faced with this urgent question, I find myself doing what, by now, has become a regular habit: I consult the global moral wisdom of Pope Francis.  In his view, the real blame for much of the world’s mass violence is fundamentalism, which has become “a disease of all religions.” "Fundamentalism,” he says, “is always a tragedy. It is not religious, it lacks God, it is idolatrous."

Let’s assume Francis is right--he usually is!  Then we must ask: what does this mean?  What is the connection between fundamentalism and terror?

Karen Armstrong’s landmark book The Battle For God: Fundamentalism in Judaism, Christianity and Islam supplies a clear and practical answer.  Based on her studies of fundamentalist movements in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Armstrong concludes that all fundamentalism follows a regular pattern that can lead to violence. Let me summarize:

Fear.  The pattern begins with discontent or fear.  Almost always it arises among people who live traditional lives and are confronted by “modernity.” This takes many forms: Christians who fears secular humanism, or the sexual revolution, or the theory of evolution; Jews alarmed by the growing Palestinian population in Israel--or even the growth of secular Jews; Muslims who fear the invasion of modern customs of dress, drinking, sexual openness, even feminism.  This fear creates a desire to escape or resist modernity.

Powerlessness.  Next comes a feeling of helplessness.  Such people want to avoid or resist modernity, but they feel its momentum is too powerful to stop.  Naturally, this feeling of powerlessness is strongest among the most desperate: people who are already poor, underprivileged, disadvantaged, or disenfranchised.  In other words, the initial fear of modernity is fueled by inequality.

“Tradition.”  Third, fundamentalism turns to “tradition” as a shield that can protect them from the overwhelming power of modernity.  Often, “tradition” means a specific religious tradition, although secular ideologies (white supremacy, neo-Nazism, etc.) are sometimes used. 

But using tradition as a shield faces an obstacle.  All "western"

religious traditions (including Islam) have a history of adapting to changing times--but fundamentalism needs a shield that is fixed, frozen in time.  This requires distorting the tradition, reshaping it into an immovable barrier against modernity.  Thus fundamentalist Christians insist on a literal interpretation of Genesis (a creation lasting seven 24-hour days) to reject the theory of evolution.  Fundamentalist Catholics pretend that priestly celibacy (and the lifelong virginity of Jesus) are absolute doctrines.  And fundamentalist Muslims twist “sharia” into an oppressive legal system and invoke “jihad” as a pretext for killing innocent people.

Violence. Left alone, fundamentalists may be content to survive sheltered behind the shield of their distorted tradition.  But   they may feel that modernity’s threat requires counterattack.  This can happen in two ways.  First, they may feel attacked from within their religion by those who reject the way they distort tradition.  Clearly, Jews, Christians, and Muslims all experience such internal conflicts.  Second, fundamentalists may feel attacked by outside forces representing modernity itself.  Thus the Russian invasion of Afghanistan brought “godless communism” to the fundamentalists’ doorstep.  And repeated intrusions by Western powers--especially the Western military presence in the sacred spaces of Saudi Arabia--threatened to pierce the shield across the Middle East.

Once they are thus cornered, fearful fundamentalists may then turn to violence.  It may be directed at Planned Parenthood (by Christians), at innocent concert-goers (by Muslims), or at Palestinian teens (by Jews).  And it finds a pretext for such violence by invoking “tradition”--even when those traditions do not, in reality, warrant such attacks.

Weaponizing religion.  The final stage comes when this newly violent version of the religious tradition is then wielded as propaganda to “inspire” other discontented people, who then become recruits to terrorism, even to suicidal violence.  Thus fundamentalism reveals itself as the “disease of all religions” whose cancerous expansion can finally metastasize into random outbreaks of terrorism whenever (1) people fear the culture around them and (2) can be converted to embracing the lie of “tradition as weapon.”

Since 9/11, we have learned that anything—a plane, shoes, underwear, a kitchen pot—can be weaponized. But perhaps the most powerful weapon comes when one mutilates faith into a form of hate.

Karen Armstrong’s convincing portrait of fundamentalism leads me to conclude that people like George Weigel have it backwards.  Terrorists are not actually motivated by their religious faith.  What moves them is their fear of the world around them, which breeds a desire for “revenge” so fierce that they hijack their own religion.  Islam does not justify terrorism, nor does it inspire terrorism.  Rather, some hate-and-fear-filled people exploit Islam as a handy “tool” they can use to rationalize the evil they do.  And this rationalization is not a “religious warrant” for terror—it is (like ANY rationalization) just an excuse. In short, Islam does not provoke terror; rather, those already committed to terror invoke Islam since it suits their purpose.

Thus the terrorists are not dangerous because they are Muslim.  They are dangerous because, since they’re so filled with hate, they reject Islam’s peaceful message and will use anything, even their own religion, as a weapon against those they hate. 

The truth is that almost all of us find that “modernity” is difficult at times.  The modern world is full of rapid change, diversity, even conflicts.  Few of us embrace these easily and naturally.  But most of us cope with the challenges of modern life and carry on.  For others, the challenges prove too much.  And whether the result is emotional disorder that leads to violent behavior, or even blind hatred that twists faith into lethal form, we must remember that they’re reacting against something that makes them afraid, helpless, and irrational.  Until we develop the means to eliminate that fear, that helplessness, and that irrationality, modernity will continue to inspire dangerous reactions. 

If we attack or blame their religion, we merely make modernity (which now “rejects” their faith) even more threatening to others who may be vulnerable to the terrorists’ propaganda. THEY may claim the battle is about “Islam vs. the West"—but we must not accept their version of events. We must not help them do their job. To defeat them, we must fight against their demonization of Islam.

The cancer of terror has reached the point where it seems out of control.  It is too late to undo the history that unleashed terror, but it is not too late to help terrorism’s potential recruits—the disenfranchised, disillusioned youth of the Middle East, Europe, and America--learn constructive ways to cope with the challenges of modern life. 

Of course, this would require, not military force, but a solution to the vast inequalities that leave millions afraid, powerless, and desperate.  And so far, we have been much better at producing guns than good will. Can we change?

© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2015