Battle to define Islam
The coverage of recent terrorist activities in the UK is everywhere, and analysts are thrown by the new profile of the alleged terrorists as mostly doctors. It’s a complicating factor, say British terrorism experts, to the usual broad brush painting of radicals as uneducated, disenfranchised victims of Western foreign policy. These guys were highly educated, experts say, and motivated by a common hatred for the West.
One of their former colleagues is giving the West a rare glimpse into their thinking. This is how the UK Guardian sets up the piece, written by a former jihadist.
As the bombers return to Britain, Hassan Butt, who was once a member of radical group Al-Muhajiroun, raising funds for extremists and calling for attacks on British citizens, explains why he was wrong…
Startling, isn’t it? One of the constant concerns in the West since 9/11, though the media are late to start voicing it aloud, is where the voices of moderate Islam have been among scholars and clerics. Or even among the regular ranks of the faithful. We wonder how we can ever have fruitful dialogue with people who won’t talk. Some of the scholars and clerics are starting to talk more. Now, some former jihadists are, too. It’s very revealing.
When I was still a member of what is probably best termed the British Jihadi Network, a series of semi-autonomous British Muslim terrorist groups linked by a single ideology, I remember how we used to laugh in celebration whenever people on TV proclaimed that the sole cause for Islamic acts of terror like 9/11, the Madrid bombings and 7/7 was Western foreign policy.
By blaming the government for our actions, those who pushed the ‘Blair’s bombs’ line did our propaganda work for us. More important, they also helped to draw away any critical examination from the real engine of our violence: Islamic theology.
Friday’s attempt to cause mass destruction in London with strategically placed car bombs is so reminiscent of other recent British Islamic extremist plots that it is likely to have been carried out by my former peers.
And as with previous terror attacks, people are again articulating the line that violence carried out by Muslims is all to do with foreign policy.
But, he says…
…what drove me and many of my peers to plot acts of extreme terror within Britain, our own homeland and abroad, was a sense that we were fighting for the creation of a revolutionary state that would eventually bring Islamic justice to the world.
How did this continuing violence come to be the means of promoting this (flawed) utopian goal? How do Islamic radicals justify such terror in the name of their religion? There isn’t enough room to outline everything here, but the foundation of extremist reasoning rests upon a dualistic model of the world. Many Muslims may or may not agree with secularism but at the moment, formal Islamic theology, unlike Christian theology, does not allow for the separation of state and religion. There is no ‘rendering unto Caesar’ in Islamic theology because state and religion are considered to be one and the same.
He outlines a two-step worldview and action plan behind this model. One, see the world as divided between the land of Islam and the land of unbelief, and two, declare war on the land of unbelief….which is the whole world.
This understanding of the global battlefield has been a source of friction for Muslims living in Britain. For decades, radicals have been exploiting these tensions between Islamic theology and the modern secular state for their benefit, typically by starting debate with the question: ‘Are you British or Muslim?’ But the main reason why radicals have managed to increase their following is because most Islamic institutions in Britain just don’t want to talk about theology. They refuse to broach the difficult and often complex topic of violence within Islam and instead repeat the mantra that Islam is peace, focus on Islam as personal, and hope that all of this debate will go away.
He says that leaves “the territory of ideas open for radicals to claim as their own.” What a good message this is for both East and West.
I believe that the issue of terrorism can be easily demystified if Muslims and non-Muslims start openly to discuss the ideas that fuel terrorism.
This is a good start.