Islamic Beliefs Provide No License for Murder

As we grope to comprehend the horrific events of September 11, we once again find ourselves asking questions such as why do Muslims hate us so much? What should be done? In posing these questions, we too often identify Islam with terrorism and irrationality. Yet, have we not invented a demonic Islam to patch over our own violent shortcomings and to legitimate our own global will to power?

Finding answers for such questions is critical in dealing with the crises that confront us, and for finding equitable, constructive solutions. Finding answers must begin with understanding Islam better. Let me begin with some of the basics.

Peace in Arabic (and Hebrew) is a three-letter word--slm--from which Islam gets its name: "to make peace, to surrender" to God. The word Islam designates an all-embracing fabric of ethical relationships and serves as a designation for a global religion that originated in seventh-century Arabia. As it spread and grew in numbers, its adherents became remarkably diversified in terms of ethnicity, class affiliation, and religious outlook.

The multicultural, multi-religious Muslim world embraced traditions of learning, art, science, business, and government from the civilizations of Byzantium, Persia, Africa, India, and even China. Indeed, the history of Islam is better characterized as an interaction of civilizations, rather than a clash of civilizations. Today, there are over 1 billion Muslims. Arabs constitute only about 20 percent; the great majority of Muslims are found east of the Middle East, in Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and India. In the United States there are between 6 and 7 million Muslims, mostly South Asians, Arabs, and African Americans.

Contrary to a view held too widely in the U.S., most Muslims do not feel threatened by science and modernity. Besides being our neighbors, they are also scientists, engineers, computer specialists, and business men and women. Moreover, as many as 1,000 of the victims of the World Trade Center attacks may have been Muslims.

So how to explain the identification of Islam with terrorism? In part, we must take into consideration the manipulation of Islamic doctrines and symbols by a very small number of organized groups and movements, such as those inspired by Usama bin Ladin, who indoctrinates young men with aberrant notions of jihad and martyrdom.

Most Muslim lay people and religious authorities protest that these groups violate an ethical tradition about jihad, or "struggle," that was intended to set limits on warfare and to guide people in the spiritual combat against their personal shortcomings. The traditional doctrine of jihad explicitly forbids harming innocent civilians, Muslims and non-Muslims. It is not a license for murder.

But the terrorist acts of radical Islamic groups cannot be accounted for only by looking at their interpolation of religious ideas and symbols. We must look beyond religion to historical and political factors at play in the modern world. Here are the most important ones:

1. The modern fragmentation of traditional authority in Muslim lands, and popular dissatisfaction with authoritarian regimes in the Middle East;
2. "Blowback" from U.S. covert operations that employed Muslim "holy warriors" (including Bin Ladin and his associates) to fight against the Soviet army in Afghanistan in the 1980s;
3. U.S. complicity in Israeli assaults on civilians in Lebanon and Palestine, and its failure to participate as an honest broker in resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict;
4. U.S. persistence in a global trade embargo against Iraq that in 10 years has resulted in the deaths of thousands of Iraqi civilians.

When we identify Islam with terrorism, we overlook the real causes of terrorist attacks. Once we recognize them, there is hope that we will find our way to long-term solutions that make this world not only a safer place, but also a better one. If we instead charge off on a "crusade" against Islam, we are falling into a trap Bin Ladin has set for us. The long-term costs of this in terms of human suffering and death, and in terms of the loss of our civil liberties, are unimaginable.

Juan E. Campo, associate professor of
religious studies, specializes in Islam
and has spent several years at the
American University in Cairo.