Terrorism is about more than religion
What is the link between terrorism and the religion of Islam? In response to the recent attack carried out by a Quebec man in a Michigan airport, Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard caused an uproar by stating that “you cannot disconnect this type of event, terrorism, from Islam in general.”
Some saw this as a refreshingly honest assessment of the situation. Others as a reckless move that will further stigmatize Muslims.
The truth is that saying that these attacks have everything to do with religion is just as inaccurate as saying they have nothing to do with religion.
The clearest evidence for the link between terrorism and Islam often comes from the mouths of the terrorists them- selves. In a September 2016 article, published in their official magazine, titled “Why we hate you and why we fight you,” Daesh states: “We hate you, first and foremost, because you are disbelievers . . . Your secular liberalism has led you to tolerate and even support ’gay rights,’ to allow alcohol, drugs, fornication, gambling, and usury to become widespread . . . The fact is, even if you were to stop bombing us, imprisoning us, torturing us, vilifying us, and usurping our lands, we would continue to hate you because our primary reason for hating you will not cease to exist until you embrace Islam.”
For many conservatives, this article seemed to be the smoking gun linking Islam to terrorism.
But this is only part of the story. As was recently pointed out by Fareed Zakaria on the Waking Up podcast, the tenets of Islam have been the same for centuries, but it is only in the past few decades that we have seen the type of widespread terrorist acts that exist today.
Throughout its history, the Muslim world has ebbed and flowed between periods of peace and conflict. If religion is the primary cause of terrorism, why is it that the vast majority of the world’s 1.8 billion Muslims want nothing to do with groups such as Daesh? Why is it that terrorist acts seem to appeal only to a tiny fraction of Muslims (mostly young men) and not everyone else?
While terrorist groups may have religious motivations behind their actions, religion is not on its own a sufficient explanation as to why these groups are appealing to a subset of people in the first place.
In a recent episode of Parts Unknown, Anthony Bourdain travelled to Trinidad, which has the highest per-capita rate of foreign fighters that have joined Daesh from the western hemisphere. In 1990, members of a Muslim extremist group launched a coup and held the prime minister of Trinidad and his cabinet hostage for six days.
Bourdain interviewed the son of one of the coup leaders to understand why so many young men are leaving the seem- ingly idyllic island to go fight for Daesh in Syria. His conclusion was that the ongoing poverty, corruption and crime in the country have bred social exclusion to the point where many young men no longer feel they have a meaningful part to play in society.
Addressing terrorism requires more than just political leaders lecturing Muslim communities. As is the case with any faith, most Muslims are born into their religion. And so condemnation from the outside feels like an assault on a core element of their personal identity. This will only work to increase the marginalization and sense of exclusion felt by many Muslims.
This is especially the case in Quebec, where over half of Quebeckers recently stated in an Angus Reid poll that they would not vote for a party that is led by someone who is Muslim.
Like most religions, Islam contains elements of both peace and violence. The specific aspects of the religion that get emphasized by its followers depend on a host of economic, social and political factors. That means we all have a role to play in building an inclusive, cohesive society, so that the narratives of groups such as Daesh no longer hold any appeal.
If religion is the primary cause of terrorism, why do the vast majority of the world’s 1.8 billion Muslims want nothing to do with Daesh?