Sanitizing Anti-Muslim Prejudice: On Violence and Terrorism

Shortly after the September 11th attacks, the US was drenched in anti-Muslim prejudice. Muslims were seen as desert dwelling terrorists whose only desire was to destroy the West entirely. Not only did Americans fear Muslims, but they harbored sincere hatred. Just the other day, I happened to spark a discussion with a truck driver named Jake at a local bar. For one reason or another, he brought up 9/11. He told me that post-9/11, any truck driver who looked Muslim was harassed and seen as “scum.” He even told me that some truck drivers would go as far as to slash tires and unscrew bolts on the truck, rendering them immobile. You may think these awful prejudices are a thing of the past, but they are not. These same prejudices are alive and kicking today, especially given the rampant anti-Muslim propaganda circulating America and much of the West. The question, though, is why? Why is there so much Islamophobia? One of the main reasons comes down to the connection between acts of terrorism and violence committed by Muslims in the name of Islam. It is, in fact, true that Muslims have committed many acts of terrorism. If we wish to remain intellectually honest, this fact cannot be denied. “No one,” wrote Mahathir Mohamad, “Muslim or non-Muslim, can deny that there have been a lot of terrorist acts perpetuated by Muslims.” But, of course, many other acts of terrorism and violence have also been carried out by non-Muslims. The difference is that when a Muslim does such, the deed is attributed to his religion. When a non-Muslim does such, the deed is not attributed to his religion. Although Islam coexists with terrorism and violence, other religions such as Christianity, Judaism, and Buddhism coexist with the two as well. This, here, is what I precisely aim to show: Terrorism and violence are carried out by people belonging to different religions.¹ These actions are by no means unique or exclusive to Islam. In addition, I want to shed light on the peaceful and harmonious side of Islam and the prophet Muhammad. This may seem rather exotic, especially since we have long been fed propagandistic tales of Muslims and their faith tradition.

Western perception has been shaped to believe Islam is defined exclusively by violence and terrorism. When any given act of terrorism is committed, the intuition that arises is that a Muslim committed it. Mohamad wrote, “The immediate reaction to the bombing of a government building in Oklahoma was that it was another Muslim terrorist act. When it was discovered that it was not a Muslim who did it, the fact that the bomber was a Christian was ignored. It was not described as Christian terrorism.” Here we see a case of terrorism that was presumed to be committed by a Muslim, and the refusal to label it Christian terrorism. Despite this, Christianity and violence are, indeed, a reality. It is not uncharacteristic of Christianity to have a violent side. Christian history has its fair share of violence, even intercommunal violence, such as the Spanish Inquisition and the Reformation.

Christians have also committed specific acts of premeditated terrorism, such as deadly attacks on abortion clinics. “Reverend Michael Bray,” wrote Mark Juergensmeyer, “is a Lutheran pastor who has been convicted of a series of abortion clinic attacks and defends the use of lethal weapons against abortion clinic staff.” Bray’s counterparts, such as church members, his wife, and his volunteer associate pastor, Michael Colvin, collectively launched these anti-abortion crusades. But since they are Christians, none of them are considered terrorists. Let’s take another example. Northern Ireland, for instance, has a long history of bitter fighting due to religious tension between two Christian sects. But here, too, the term terrorism never applied. “At no time,” wrote Mohamad, “have the bombings, killings, and maimings by the IRA and their Protestant rivals been termed Christian terrorism or Catholic or Protestant terrorism.” Even so, the terrorism committed by Christians in Northern Ireland “pales into insignificance when compared with the brutality of the Christian Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina.”

“Tens of thousands of Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina have been raped, starved, tortured, and massacred by the Serbs. Mass graves are found everywhere. The Bosnian Serbs openly declared that they were carrying out 'ethnic cleansing’ in order to prevent the setting up of a Muslim nation in Europe. Because of certain implications, Europe refuses to describe 'ethnic cleansing' as 'genocide', which is what it really is. Yet at no time have the massacres and terrorism by the Christian Serbs been described as Christian terrorism.” — Mahathir Mohamad

Similarly, Judaism has a history of violence and terrorism. The Hebrew Bible, for instance, contains swaths of violent passages and even direct orders to slaughter particular peoples. “There is, of course,” wrote Robert Eisen, “other types of violence that are pertinent to Judaism, such as violence against women, gays, and heretics. We also have plenty of instances in Jewish texts that depict God’s violent behavior toward human beings, both Jews and non-Jews.” Perhaps the most ubiquitous act of terror was launched against the Canaanites, a group of ancient people who inhabited the land of Canaan on the Eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea. According to the Hebrew Bible, God commanded the Israelites not only to take possession of the land, but to annihilate its inhabitants, including women and children. “God does not want the Israelites to come into contact with Canaanite idolatry lest they abandon him and worship Canaanite gods (Deut. 7:2–4, 20:16–18.)” The conquest, however, did not end with the Canaanites. The Amalekites, too, endured a similar fate. While it is unclear if the command to annihilate the Amalekites was fulfilled entirely, the intent of God’s command to wipe them out remains clear enough.

“We are told in the book of Exodus that, just after the Israelites are redeemed from Egypt, they are attacked by the Amalekites. The Israelites prevail in the ensuing battle, but God commands them to continue their war against the Amalekites in the future and to annihilate them, the assumption being that the Amalekites who attacked the Israelites were part of a much larger people. The war with the Amalekites is couched in cosmic terms; God himself will be at war with the Amalekites throughout the ages (Ex. 17:8–16).”

Since Israel’s inception in 1948, the relationship between Judaism and violence has risen to international significance. “The Middle East conflict is,” wrote Robert Eisen, “first and foremost a conflict between Jews and Palestinians. Jews see the establishment of the state of Israel as a triumphant return to their homeland after two thousand years of exile in which they were a subjugated and persecuted minority in Europe and in the Islamic world. Palestinians see the same event as an unmitigated disaster that dispossessed them of their land by foreign invaders and has caused them deep suffering ever since.” The ongoing tension between Jews and Palestinians has also served as a springboard for various acts of terrorism. One of the most spectacular acts of Jewish terrorism in Israeli history consisted of car bomb attacks on three democratically elected, pro-PLO West Bank Arab mayors. Furthermore, during the early 1970s in the US, Jewish terrorists carried out attacks on Arab and Soviet diplomats. In 1975, the radical Jewish militant organization, “TNT” (Terror Against Terror) claimed responsibility for burning an Arab bus in Wadi al-Joz occupied Jerusalem. In addition, four members of TNT were arrested on charges of preparing to burn down a mosque in Old Jerusalem.

“Since 1975, there has been a series of terrorist acts against West Bank Arabs, their property, and Islamic and Christian places of worship. The acts included the following: Arabs, even small children, have been fired on, attacked with blows, beaten up, throttled, tortured, and sometimes killed, their bodies being thrown into roads and fields.” — Ahmed Khalifa

Similar to Christianity and Judaism, Buddhism has a history of terrorism and violence, too. Violent incidents in Sri Lanka and Myanmar have been carried out by fundamentalist Buddhist groups against Muslim minority communities, indicating a militant ultra-nationalist strand within a segment of Theravada Buddhism. Around the time of Buddhist nationalism's emergence in Myanmar, radical Buddhist groups in Sri Lanka began to target Muslim and Christian minorities by imposing hate speech and various forms of violence upon them. In March of 1995, assailants on three Tokyo subway lines killed twelve people and injured nearly 6,000. The Japanese doomsday cult, “Aum Shinrikyo” allegedly committed the attack. The organization claimed to predicate its teachings on the fundamental tenets of Buddhism.

I now want to shift attention to the fundamental tenets of Islam, many of which may seem exotic given that Western perception frames Islam as antithetical to peace and harmony. As you will see, however, this perception is mistaken. Many Islamic teachings are, in fact, consistent with peace and harmony. For example, the Qur’an speaks about the importance of liberty of conscience and forbearance toward enemies. It prohibits unprovoked aggressive warfare and promises universal salvation to all righteous monotheists, regardless of whether you follow the prophet Muhammad. Moreover, the Qur’an continually instructs believers to repel evil with good, pardon their persecutors, and wish peace upon their harassers. Juan Cole, a scholar of the Middle East, argues that the Muhammad of these years (610-622) reflects the Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount. Even during Muhammad’s later years (622-632), many scholars contend that his move to Medina from his hometown Mecca may have been tied to Roman diplomacy. While the Qur’an holds to the doctrine of “just war,” similar to Cicero and late-antique Christian thinkers, it nevertheless seeks peace over violence. In other words, war is defensive, not offensive. According to Cole, Muhammad understood himself as an ally of the West and, during much of his time, Islam spread peacefully in the major cities of Western Arabia, as the Qur’an suggests.

Further confusion arises when it comes to Muhammad’s character. Many depict him as a blood-thirsty warlord who sought to convert people to Islam through extreme violence and conquest. However, the Iranian invasion of Roman territory in 603 and the Sasanian conquest of Jerusalem in 614 distressed Muhammad profoundly. “A close reading of the Qur’an,” wrote Cole, “shows a profound distress at the carnage of the age that led Muhammad to spend the first half of his prophetic career (610-622) imagining an alternative sort of society, one firmly grounded in practices of peace.” It is striking that this framing of Islam and Muhammad is almost completely unknown to most of us. This demonstrates how poorly Islam has been understood. Cole suggests that these misunderstandings arise for many reasons, including the imperial ideologies of the later Christian Byzantine and Muslim Abbasid empires, difficulties interpreting the Qur’an, and a failure to read it against contemporary Roman and Iranian texts, “a procedure that allows us to compare and contrast its values and concerns with those of others living during that time.”

“The image of Muhammad and very early Islam that emerges from a careful reading of the Qur’an on peace-related themes contradicts not only the widely held Western views but even much of the later Muslim historiographical tradition. This finding should come as no surprise. Life in medieval feudal societies did not have pacific theologies, and Muslims in later empires lost touch with the realities of the early seventh century. What if we read Jesus’s life and thought only through the lens of Pope Urban II, who launched the sanguinary Crusades in the Holy Land with the cry, “God wills it!” — Juan Cole

It is almost certain that nearly every religion expresses violent dimensions in one way or another. Whether the violence amounts to historical strife among inter-communal religious sects, syncretic motivations, social, economic, or political grievances, the causes remain complex. In many ways, however, religious violence attests more to the human condition than it does to religion itself. Religion alone is rarely a causal motivator to commit terrorism or violence. Instead, people use religion to legitimize their harmful actions. But since human beings have violent tendencies, violence will manifest within the religious experience in various ways. Whatever the causes may be, the illumination of pluralistic religious violence undermines the idea that violence and terrorism are unique to Islam.

1. Terrorism and violence carry the same destructive power, but the terms are slightly different. I think of violence as, say, hate speech, racism, discriminating against others, or an isolated act of aggression upon an individual. Terrorism, however, is different insofar as it is an attack against a non-combatant target for political and ideological purposes. It has a larger scope and meaning behind it. So, terrorism graduates beyond mere violence. That said, I would throw terrorism into the broader category of “violence dimensions.” Since it is, of course, an expression of violence.