We have so far failed to challenge jihadism intellectually
Whenever a jihadist attack hits the headlines, our first question is always the same. Who, or what, inspired the killers to take up arms?
In the case of Sunday’s attack in Dallas, we didn’t have long to wait. Reports state that the attack was preceded by a tweet by the handle ‘Shariah is Light’. The avatar of that account displayed a photograph of Anwar al-Awlaki, the late al-Qaeda Yemen leader and prominent preacher. We learnt that this man and his brother had given baya – or sworn their allegiance – to the Amir ul-Mumineen: that is, to the new Prince of the Believers. By that, he meant the leader of ISIS: the so-called Caliphate or Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. These tweets were published 15 minutes before the attacks took place.
We now know that the two men were Elton Simpson and Nadir Hamid Soofi. Simpson had been considered by the FBI to be a dangerous jihadist who had flown to Somalia to join Jihadists, presumably Al-Shabaab. When questioned, Simpson had lied about his reasons for travel to the FBI. He was convicted for lying about his plans to go to Somalia. However, strangely, the judge decided that they had not proven that he was going to Somalia to join a jihadist group. Accordingly, he was given a suspended sentence.
The Twitter account was not the total of Simpson’s social media activity. However, the authorities had decided that he wasn’t a threat and had no idea that he would undertake this attack. The attachment to Awlaki should have been a clue, given that the late preacher had delivered extensive talks and lessons inciting people to kill those who insult the Prophet of Islam.
We saw the same pattern in both the Danish and French incidents, where the killers had given their baya to the ISIS ‘Amir’ online, or made videos to that end. We know one of the French duo had previously been in contact with Awlaki in Yemen. So now, in three countries, people have either been killed or attempts have been made to kill people, apparently for the sin of blaspheming against the Prophet of Islam (and let us not forget, or in the case of the French and Danish incidents, merely for being Jewish).
Those targeted in these accounts were of varied political orientation. Pamela Geller, who organised the event in Dallas exhibiting cartoons of the Prophet, heads the bigoted American Freedom Defence Initiative, who are hardly advocates of liberal rights when it comes to Muslims. Charlie Hebdo, by contrast, is a pro-immigrant, anti-racist Left publication that tirelessly criticised the Far Right in France.
In Denmark, the murdered were simply Jews in a synagogue; in France they were Jews in a supermarket – though they were described by Obama as a ‘random bunch of folks in a deli’. The murderers included people from Europe but with North African or Palestinian heritage, a white American and apparently an American of Pakistani heritage born in the US, who was a graduate of Utah University.
What did these killers have in common? They all subscribed to extremist ideology, manifested in a strident reading of religious texts mixed with the modern concept of a totalitarian Islamist expansionist state. They all gave their medieval pledge of allegiance to this state and leader, or were followers of Al Qaeda’s Anwar al Awlaki. They all believed that they were faithfully discharging a modernist implementation of an anarchic take on the shariah law of blasphemy.
It is these ideological beliefs that tie all these murderers together. The link is their connection with extremist clerics, ideology, and the ISIS/Al Qaeda version of Islam. Not ethnicity. Not social backgrounds. Not the socialisation in society or lack thereof. Not a lack of family and education. Not their family history of colonisation. These attacks cannot be explained by any other social factors.
That does not mean that other considerations are unimportant. Take the Danish case. Omer el-Hussain was rejected by everyone including the gangs in which he was involved. He was however associating with extremists in prison and reports were made to the authorities which raised concerns about his radicalisation. The Danish authorities did not take these reports seriously. In the same way, they did not address the threat to the Jewish community and synagogue in Copenhagen, even when help was requested following the attacks in Paris.
It is essential that we identify this particular fundamentalist reading of scripture, and totalitarian ideology seeking to enforce a specific and own singular reading or interpretation of religion. It is this ideology which manipulates people’s often new religious identities, and takes grievances that they may have in order to distort them. Thus we are faced with the spectacle of people who – allegedly – are so disturbed by the plight of the Palestinians that they go ally with their oppressors and murderers in Syria’s Yarmouk refugee camp.
None of this is new. Whether it is the idealised totalitarianism of Mao, or the paranoia of Stalin, or the utopian ideal of the Islamist super state, all such ideologies end in a gory retelling of Animal Farm. Jihadism is no different in the manner in which it destroys human life. Slaughter, in the name of the state, or to protect the religion, or for the greater benefit of protecting the faith or advancing the one true ideology is always the final chapter.
This totalitarian vision is peddled by other groups too, to a greater or lesser extent. Hizb ut-Tahrir have found it difficult to express any deep criticism of ISIS, although they question its validity. By contrast, the group al-Muhajiroun (which takes all of its ideological content from Hizb ut-Tahrir but its theological beliefs from Salafism), has declared the soundness of the ISIS state. You’ll find other Islamists who will raise fringe objections to the particular Islamist State in Syria and Iraq because, well, they just aren’t burning the right people.
None of this means that we shouldn’t care about attempting to resolve the conflict between Israel and Palestine, or try to address structural issues of inequality and discrimination, or to challenge anti-Muslim bigotry. However, ignoring the ideology or downplaying the role of Islamist ideology in radicalisation is dangerous and will have more grave consequences. Challenging it intellectually is key, but we have so far failed to do so.
Our institutions need to address these jihadist ideas. It is the role of our intellectuals to demonstrate why these ideas are poor ways to organise societies; our historians to show their perfect historic narrative is really a counter factual; our specialist scholars to highlight the falsehood of their claims to religious consensus (in this instance this is a violation of the consensus) and authority. We need to argue that, fundamentally, we can live in a society composed of different religious traditions and values.
We must recognise that the liberal and pluralist settlement we have achieved in Europe, born from our experience of the horrors of totalitarian experiments in the twentieth century, provides the best framework in which competing religious ideas, groups and political ideas can coexist.
Yet, I fear that before we win that battle, we will sadly see more deaths on all sides: both of innocents and of their misguided assailants.
Rashad Ali is a fellow of the Institute of Strategic Dialogue and a director of the counter-extremism consultancy CENTRI
56 Responses to “Dallas shooting: downplaying the role of ideology will only make matters worse”
Leon Wolfeson
Thanks for highlighting your obsessions.
damon
It’s a bit late now. These ideas are out there and they will continue to exist even if they become unfashionable. You will always have people attracted to this kind of radicalism, just like there will always be people who like progressive rock. It’s a minority taste and is pretty underground, but it’s still there. And thrives today still, because of the internet maybe.
I just heard that head guy from Mpacuk on the radio this morning, and the presenter had to cut him off because he was being too ”radical”. But free speech says he should be allowed to continue putting his views forth. Governments, police forces and schools are not really up to the job of lessening this radicalism I think. It’s too difficult.
If the US even has problems, countries in Europe don’t have a chance.
Patrick7Gormley
Violence such as that we have seen in Dallas starts with society “respecting” instead of discouraging belief in sacred books from God which espouse and permit and endorse violence.
It is well known that the Bible and the Koran and the Book of Mormon claim to be the Word of God. They claim to be authored by God. The fact that believers know of the violence and evil commanded by God in those books and stay in their religions and even venerate these books is bewildering and disturbing.
Many say that a religion is not to blame for everything that bad members do. It is to blame when it can stop them but won’t or if its scriptures command them to wrong others. A religion is to be firstly judged by its source of authority be that a God or a Bible or a Prophet. An evil Bible for example is a foundation for either an evil religion or a hypocritical one if not both. Judge the authority. Then you may judge the role of the religion in the evil that its members do.
Believers make excuses for the evil commanded in their holy books. To believe that a book is God’s word because man gives reasons why it must be so and because man excuses the bad bits is really making man’s thinking the foundation of your faith. The excuses are invariably speculative. They pretend to lead you to God.
Empathy is the ability to understand somebody thoughts and ideas and fears and emotions and feelings from their own perspective. The book Christianity is Not Great points out that those who condone Bible and divine cruelty have a lack of empathy which “keeps believers from accepting the truth about their faith.” They don’t seem to care that God never clearly condemned slavery in the Bible. They argue that the Bible spells out principles that imply slavery is wrong. But the point is that they might not be meant to imply that it is wrong even if they do. “If you were a slave … wouldn’t you wish the Christian God had clearly condemned slavery? God’s defenders simply lack empathy for these people. They refuse to feel their pain.” The book asserts then that their faith works like an anaesthetic and deadens the pain and sympathy they should feel for the slaves.
Now a person might be horrified at the thought that a divine power lets the innocent suffer horrendously even little babies. It makes her sick. Her head might tell her God has a plan but that should have little effect on the horror she feels. So how do believers cope? They work on feeling good about condoning and approving of this God that allows the unimaginably evil to happen. They condone it and it make them feel good. It is no wonder then that violent scriptures by violent gods are so honoured.
The Bible and the Koran deny that they are written only for theologians. They are addressed to the ordinary person. The authors were well aware that ordinary people have limited understanding and have limited time to think about religious matters. The holy books themselves do not expect those who will kill for their faith to have a a complete understanding of the books. No honest person who believes God wrote the Bible for example could complain if somebody knows the Bible in an average way and then decides to murder adulterers by stoning just as God commanded. Theologians are liars. They try to undermine the fact that the texts should be and are intended to be interpreted as the average person would interpret them. They come up with far-fetched and complicated excuses to cover up the nasty teachings and that is only if they have to. Usually they just tell people the sweet stuff. They manipulate the people. No Catholic priest tells a child preparing for full membership in the Church by confirmation, “You need to be very sure this religion is true. Thus you must think about all the murdering God commanded in the Bible before he became man in Jesus Christ. If you think it is wrong then find another faith.” The Bible and Koran were written to a generation that knew less than ours and which was more accepting of violence and religious extremism. They sanctify and embody and endorse extremisms and no lies by Pope Francis or anybody else that claims that religion does not justify violence change that. Telling lies only serves to make religion corrupt and that will lead to violence in itself.
Those who know religious scriptures endorse violence, often still insist that those followers who dish out that violence, are not “real Christians” or not “real Muslims” or whatever. They go as far as to argue that they have nothing to do with Christianity or Islam at all. That is extreme. You need something to do with a religion in order to claim to wage war in its name. There has to be something there. When confronted with the violence they say it is poetry and not to be taken literally. That is just scripture-twisting. It is dishonest and makes words mean nothing. No jihadist is going to listen to their nonsense. And they shouldn’t expect them to listen.
Another tactic to say that the scriptural violence was right in its time for it was done in self-defence or a just war or something. You need proof that it was a just war but all you get is speculation and weak evidence. Nobody has the right to approve a war on slender evidence even if that war happened in 10,000 BC. What does approving say about you?
Some say, “The bad things my faith has done and which its Bible says God did are in the past. We have moved on and learned from all that.” They are implying that if they were alive then and not today they would not condone or participate. But they probably would. It is very likely that they would for those Christians in the past who opposed slavery for example were very few in number. The chance that you would live in 1300 and not want to see heretics burned to death and witches murdered would be so statistically small that it is virtually certain you would be as bad as the Church that destroyed them. The chance that you would want them murdered by the Church is statistically huge. It is arrogant to say you would not kill or enable the killing if you were alive then. You cannot know that and you are using the deaths of those people as an excuse to boast that you would have nothing to do with it. If you say your religion knows better now, you cannot say it did in 1300. If you were in the religion and leave then you would be as bad as the rest. Indeed you are in your heart for you should not be in a religion that has done such great evil even if it has changed. The evil proves that the religion is not immune to doing it – you are encouraging a religion and serving it when it has no intrinsic power to avoid evil to a reasonable degree at least. What if there is something subtle in the religious doctrines or some supernatural force supporting the religion that leads you to execute evil when the time is right? What if this kind of evil is intrinsic to the religion?
You cannot trust your peaceful interpretation of a book you say is infallible such as the Bible or Koran or Book of Mormon when there are disagreements about whether violence is needed or not in its pages. It takes the wind from your sails. You cannot convince others.
To accuse the violent Christians or Muslims of misinterpreting their religions means your peaceful interpretation is just another opinion. It is not right just because you say so. And who should listen to you if the Christians and Muslims who serve violence know their religious history and scriptures better than you do? If a violent interpretation of a book allegedly from God is reasonable and if a peaceful interpretation is reasonable, the religion is still to blame for the actions of the violent interpreters. Take the scripture A Course in Miracles. It preaches love and peace and unlike the Bible never commands violence but the problem is that it preaches moral relativism. Thus though the followers are people of peace they are still to blame if some member goes out with a machine gun and reasons, “I feel that God wants me to kill. Morality is mere opinion so why not? Good and evil/right and wrong are whatever people say they are.” They are to blame for they are a community that stands for moral relativism. The gunman is not an island. His religion being a major part of his environment formed him as did other influences. If followers of A Course in Miracles are to admit responsibility, how much more are those who elevate scriptures above all other books and call them divinely inspired when those books command torture and violence and lies in the name of God? If religion results from indoctrination, it is intrinsically and inherently violent for indoctrination is violence. The wife who is treated well by her husband who merely wants to program her mind his way is still being abused and mistreated. Indoctrination creates an inherent alienation of other human beings – it is a kind of racism based on us versus them or us not them. Religion is not a harmless picnic.
Liberal Christians claim that the Bible shows how God gave revelation progressively, he helped the true and good religion evolve. This is the excuse then for the violence commanded by God in the Old Testament. But the history of the religion looks like there was no divine guidance at all and any improvement came through trial and error. The talk about progressive revelation can be used by any religion even a religion based on deliberate hoaxes. To say that God let us murder and maim for he didn’t think we were ready to be told that it is wrong is disgusting.
The Christian view that slavery is bad but we were too stubborn to give it up so God had to tolerate it and wean us away from it progressively is an excuse for tolerating the intolerable. They want us to believe that God accommodated his revelation to us by at first saying nothing against slavery and when we were ready he got us to abolish it and see it for the evil it truly is. That is just an excuse for saying that a collection of books purporting to give us instruction from God are from God despite the terrible moral teachings. With an excuse like that, you could write Mein Kamph volume 2 and fill it with nice thoughts and say that it and Mein Kamph are inspired by God.
The Koran God teaches good things and bad things. You might understand this as God giving a mixed message about violence and so on. Suppose you are right that it does, You might interpret the Koran as a book of peace and say it commands that we never be violent. But that does not change the fact that there is a mixed message. A mixed message shows a reluctance and a failure to condemn violence correctly and thoroughly and clearly. It is still a seed of violence and violence starts in the heart. A peaceful religion contains the seeds of violence when it has scriptures that at least occasionally command violence in the name of a good God because it is leaving its scriptures wide up to a violent interpretation. A really good scripture gives nothing at all that can be interpreted or misconstrued as endorsing evil. Really good people discard such scriptures.
If a scripture can reasonably be interpreted as allowing or even worse, endorsing, violence and cruelty it is to blame for any suffering that is caused. If you accept that a scripture is God’s word then conforming to your (maybe violent) interpretation of it becomes a duty. It is not a choice. You do not have the freedom to choose where duty is concerned. You obey. Some say that the solution to this is empathy – trying to understand how those who you might persecute feel and think and why. But empathy is hard to achieve where you have a strong sense of duty. Plus one purpose of duty is to by-pass thinking things over and making a choice. You just carry out the duty.
The book Christianity is Not Great pleases me so much for it shows atheists might need to concentrate not so much on, “Why does God allow evil to happen and how can he be good when he lets it happen?” but on, “Why does God command evil in the Bible and even murders and still get adoration from Christians?”
Christianity is Not Great invites us to exercise empathy and be horrified at the God who commanded terrible things in the Bible and at Jesus who saw nothing wrong with these deeds. “It is not enough to raise the NO True Scotsman argument to dodge accountability. These ideas exist in the Bible. If you proclaim allegiance to the Bible, you claim responsibility for its content and the injustice it perpetuates in society” from Christianity is Not Great.
Believers in the Bible are taking responsibility for its contents and what it asks people to do. They are also taking responsibility for the attempts made by theologians, clergy and others who attempt to condone and excuse and make light of the evil commanded by the God whom the Bible claims is its ultimate author. If you really understand suffering and how terrible and intolerable it is, you will not lightly say, “It is God’s plan.” You would need to be willing to fix all that suffering if possible before you would have the right to say such a thing. The comfort some (not all!) get or say they get from people telling them God has a plan is misplaced.
Despite ordering that people be stoned to death, God “failed to provide his people with reasonable rules of evidence to judge criminal cases”.
Christianity is Not Great says that God communicated badly and witches and others were killed by religion because of it. It says God did nothing to help. It says the believers who answer that we don’t know if God did help but should believe that he did. God never said he had a reason for being so vague so we have no right to guess that he did. You don’t want to be condoning all the evil and bloodshed and death over a guess. It is too serious for that. It is different if God said he was sorry but he had a reason that we would not understand and explains why we cannot understand.
If a religion is really good for you, it will have nothing in its holy books that risks being interpreted or misinterpreted as a yes to violence. A good God would not write in such a way. The need for interpretation can be avoided at best and minimised at worst. To promote such a book or religion is to take part in the creation of violence perhaps retrospectively.
It is outrageous how anybody can say religion is only about peace. Christianity allows war in certain circumstances knowing fine well that war makes many people uncontrollable and soon there is child murder, rape, torture all because the chances of getting away with it are virtually certain. Both Christianity and Islam facilitate terror – it might be sort of limited but that does not make it any better. And both the Bible and Koran Gods commanded violence. Airbrushing violent religious teachings does not help at all and is refusing to deal with the problem properly and honestly and can lead to violence against those who broadcast the truth and oppose scriptures and holy books that glorify evil. Even if religiously motivated killers are disobedient to say Christianity or Islam, the question is, how wrong (from a biblical or Koranic perspective) is that disobedience considering God supposedly endorsed violence anyway in the scriptures? Perhaps it could be seen by believers as being wrong but not a serious sin considering violence is not intrinsically wrong? I am proud to follow no scripture and is it any wonder? I don’t want to enable anything that enables or could enable grave violence to be regarded as less bad than what it is.
We need to stop worrying more about the evil we directly enable or help to happen and realise that the evil we indirectly enable often is worse and more toxic. The Bible led to Protestant terrorism in Europe. Catholics and Protestants are both to blame for this for both advocate acceptance of the Bible as the unerring word of God.
We conclude that the excuses for the scriptural violence are rooted in religious prejudice and bigotry and deceitfulness and not in justice. An extreme example of this bigotry is how people have been put to death for wanting a civilised Bible. Nobody was ever burned at the stake for saying God is bad but for saying he is too good to write nasty Bibles or to condone Jesus’ hate speeches.
Leave those religions of the Bible – they have no moral authority to call you a member or require that you should be one.
Stormbringer
“Whenever a jihadist attack hits the headlines, our first question is
always the same. Who, or what, inspired the killers to take up arms?”
The answer is Islam. The Koran doesn’t just incite violence (often targeted at particular groups) but makes it absolutely clear that it is the non-negotiable moral duty of those who are brainless enough to actually believe it that they must murder Jews, Heretics, Apostates, Pagans, Adulterers, Gays, etc, etc, etc.
Islam is a particularly barbaric form of feeble-minded fascism whose followers are absolutely intolerant of anyone saying whatever they wish about their Paedophile Prophet so they naturally want to kill anyone who does. This Koran inspired attack is motivated by precisely the same Infantile Ideology behind Islamic State and amounts to little more than a Totalitarian Theocracy.
Anyone on the Left who aren’t aware of this hard fact have their heads buried very deep in bone-headed and are merely idiot apologists for utter evil.
Stormbringer
Excellent article here that debunks the self-serving myths that have been muttered by the muddled middle-classes about Charlie Hebdo:
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/05/charlie-hebdo-trudeau-pen-garland/392255/