[Peace-discuss] Karen Armstrong - The label of Catholic terror was never used

[David Green]

It's been easy for people like Thomas Friedman (today
in the NYT) and many others to talk about Islamic
terror because Arab nationalism was violently
repressed, and what's left is religion as a
radicalizing force. This wasn't the case in Ireland.
It's interesting that Zionism, a "successful"
nationalist movement, has now spawned genuine
religious extremism and fanaticism as an aspect not of
liberation, but imperialism.

Subject: Karen Armstrong - The label of Catholic
terror was never used 
about the IRA

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. 

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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 at btopenworld.com
 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/attackonlondon/comment/story/0,16141,1525894,00.html




		
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