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”
Stormbringer
I only need to read it the once to know that it is yet more brainless babbling.
Leon Wolfeson
You quote a man who threatened people based on their origin. That’s what you’re defending – hate speech and violence, bigotry and intolerance. Under the guise of free speech.
Keep fighting society. You’re clearly deeply intimidated by those evil women and children who don’t believe as you do.
Leon Wolfeson
So you haven’t read it, instead you’re simply trolling.
Probably because I’m Jewish, of course.
I note you are also per your postings, fanatically anti-University, anti-academia and anti-education. who has made apologia repeatedly for violence when the person doing it is Christian. And you have no idea of what Freedom of Speech in the UK means, as opposed to your America – and you care about crime only when Muslims do it, crime from your “superiors” is fine and dandy for you, I see.
Does JAMES MCGIBBON know you’re the same person as he is?
Stormbringer
“Ah yes, I’m Jewish.”
So what?
“Right, I’m the utter evil, of course.”
If you insist although I just think that you’re merely stupid and a ill-informed prat who has never bothered to think through the confused clap trap that you carry around in your pathetically infantile, little mind and that has absolutely nothing to do with you being Jewish.
“Your far right is of course violent, but you want to hide that.”
Yet more air-headed assumption – what’s remotely right wing or at all violent about accurately describing Islam as Fascism and those who follow it as Fascists?
“Then you use an anti-disabled slur.”
No I didn’t – you’re just seriously stupid and clearly out-of-your-depth.
“I’m not “fooling anyone”
You’re not fooling anyone because you’re too idiotic to be capable of fooling anyone as the responses to your cretinous comments clearly illustrate.
“by not being an extremist”
But you are an extremist – you’re a totalitarian tool, a mere crypto fascist who only ever excuses Islamism and an idiot apologist for utter evil. The only way you could be more extreme would be to actually convert to full blown Jihadism.
This is exactly why you fool no one else and if you even bothered to read the numerous replies to your ridiculous remarks then you would be well aware of this hard fact and understand that your worthless words are entirely wasted.
“I’ll keep arguing for not having your Jihad, as you make your excuses for your far right”
You’ll keep being stupid because that’s all you’re capable of being and your last sentence is a perfect example of why your every single word is simply a tenuous turd falling straight out of the empty anus you call a brain.
Leon Wolfeson
Ah, so you want to gloss over that part of your hate.
Of course you need to say it’s nothing to do with being Jewish that Judaism is “merely stupid and a ill-informed prat who has never bothered to think through the confused clap trap that you carry around in your pathetically infantile, little mind”.
So…no logic from you then!
Keep throwing those insults at me, because I’m Jewish but not really, honest. You can’t dispute anything I actually said, of course, you’re just throwing insults.
I’m not your kind of totalitarian and fascist, and both your far right and Islamists are extremists and a problem. And you both see Jews as a problem, etc, as you claim to speak for “no one else”, and scream that a Jew’s words are worthless.
Thanks for your bigotry and hate, your determination to eclipse any mere Islamist in your torrent of bigotry. As you keep using anti-disabled slurs, too.