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Why Islamist attack demands a careful response from Mozambique

Fri, 20 Oct 2017 08:09:19 +0000

In the early hours of 5 October 2017 a group of 30 men attacked three police stations in Mocimboa da Praia, a small town of 30,000 inhabitants in Northern Mozambique. They killed two policemen, stole arms and ammunition, and occupied the town.

Mozambique’s military responded swiftly following deadly attacks by Islamist gunmen on three police stations recently. Reuters/Juda Ngwenya

They told local people they would not hurt them, that their fight was with the state and the police. They explained that they rejected state health and education and refused to pay taxes. The local population calls these men “Al-Shabaabs”.
Mozambique’s government’s response was swift. It fought back with forces from other districts and special forces from the provincial capital. The battle lasted several hours and left 16 dead, including two policemen and a community leader.
The attack came as a shock to a country already grappling with major economic and political problems. The incident is the first confirmed Islamist armed attack in Mozambique.

Information is still sparse and confused. But for now, we can say with some degree of certainty that what happened on 5 October 2017 was not a Somali Al-Shabaab attack nor an externally driven international Jihadi plot. Nor was it a state conspiracy as some had suggested.

Rather, the attack appears to have been carried out by a group of local young Muslims who formed a sect in 2014 in Mocimboa da Praia which is known as “Al-Shabaab”. The group controls two mosques in the town and have told their followers to stop sending their children to secular institutions such as state schools and hospitals. It wants Sharia law applied in their area.

The fact that this first Islamist attack was carried out by Mozambicans makes the event no less shocking, particularly in a country proud of its sound and relaxed inter-religious relations. Until we get more information on the group and what triggered it to attack the state, it’s worth setting the incident within a historical context.

Islam in Mozambique

Islam has a very old presence in Mozambique, particularly on the coast and in the Northern parts of the country. Various Sultanates and Sheikdom existed before Portugal occupied the territory in the late 19th Century .

The Portuguese colonialists openly and officially favoured Catholicism, at a time repressing Islam and other religions. But Islam gained converts and nonetheless grew. By the time of independence in 1975 Muslims officially accounted for 13% of the population. The 1997 census gave the figure of 17.8%. Both figures are contested by Muslims who believe them to be higher.

After independence the Liberation Front of Mozambique (Frelimo) adopted Marxist-Leninism. It attacked all faiths, but Islam was particularly affected. It was a faith most state leaders didn’t understand. This was evident in incidents such as President Samora Machel keeping his shoes when he walked into the main mosque in the country. Another example was the government insisting on pigsties being built in Muslim areas in the name of “development”. Memories such as these are still raw and were raised yet again after the Mocimboa da Praia attack.

After Frelimo abandoned Marxism-Leninism and shifted to multiparty democracy, the party began courting all religions to gain electoral support. But tensions still arose from time to time. One involved the government taking steps to officially recognise Islamic holidays. This sparked a crisis in parliament in 1996 and the Frelimo governing party backtracked, adopting a more secular approach from then on.

The incident served to remind Muslims that they still felt marginalised.

Islam is overwhelmingly Sufi in Mozambique, with a majority of Muslims belonging to different Turuq (brotherhoods). Sufism represents the more mystical side of Islam – opposed by scripturalist Muslims, such as the Wahhabi, who accuse them of deviating from the Koran.

The return of African graduates from Saudi Arabia in the 1970s gave political clout to the reformist and scripturalist movements in Mozambique. They gained control of some mosques and, in collaboration with the Portuguese, expanded their presence.

Today the main national organisation is the reformist Islamic Council which was created after independence by Wahhabi elements and grew in the 1980s and 1990s in partnership with the authorities.

Splinter organisations appeared in the late 1990s and 2000s, particularly in Northern Mozambique. As reformism gained firmer ground in the north, tensions and conflict increased. Controversies emerged in relation to sufi practices, alcohol, education and dress code. There was, however, never any violence against the state.

Powder keg

Although no international terror group has been linked to Mocimba da Praia, the incident is very serious. Cabo Delgado is a Muslim-majority province where discoveries of giant oil and gas reserves have brought international conglomerates and their private security, making the area a potential powder-keg.

On top of this, the area is desperately poor. Northern areas of Mozambique have gained little from the economic boom of the 2000s. Mocimboa da Praia is a case in point: little development has been seen even as expectations exploded following the discovery of massive gas and oil reserves in the province. Billions of dollars have been invested in offshore drilling, with little benefit to local communities.

The government must devise a careful and well-thought response to this new Islamist threat. Downplaying the affair as “banditry” and dealing only with the sect when it’s clear that there are broader religious and social dynamics at play risks seeing the problem reemerge elsewhere.

In turn, going for an all-out repression to eradicate the “Islamist threat” could radicalise other Muslims and root the problem deeper and more widely – think only of Boko Haram in West Africa in 2009.

So far state officials have been careful and moderate in their statements. But practice on the ground needs to follow the same line and some changes in social and religious policy will need to follow.

Eric Morier-Genoud, Lecturer in African history, Queen’s University Belfast

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The post Why Islamist attack demands a careful response from Mozambique appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Open Letter: To Islamist Extremists, from the Other Muslims of the World

Tue, 28 Mar 2017 07:38:24 +0000

This is an open letter addressed to ISIS, Al-Qaeda, Boko Haram and all other violent Islamist extremist groups; their members, followers, and supporters…

Image: Pinterest

We, the other Muslims of the world, would like to invite you to an open debate about our respective ideas of the Islamic ethics of war and peace.

We wish to understand how such drastically divergent understandings have evolved from two groups who ostensibly belong to the same religion, read the same scripture, and follow the same prophets.

With such diametrically opposed notions, it is clear that both of us cannot be right. It is time we began a conversation to understand each point of view, and decide who can more rightly claim to hold the authentic interpretation.

You have been invited to this discussion many times before. Consider this letter merely one among many that challenge you to show how you formulate your dis-ethics from within our tradition.

You have discarded the majority of Quranic passages as abrogated, disregarded a thousand years of learned majority opinion, declared war without legitimate authority, transgressed all bounds regarding the proper conduct of war, failed to discriminate between combatants and innocent civilians, used the forbidden act of suicide as a military tactic, forced conversion upon non-Muslims, declared takfir against Muslims, expelled millions from their homes, violated international treaties, belied the very name of the religion, smeared the reputation of its followers around the globe, and plunged the Islamic world into its dark ages. In each one of these, you have directly contravened the message of the Quran.

Although we disagree on many points, our differences loom largest when we look to the verses in the Quran related to striving (jihad), fighting (Qatal), and war (Harb). On a superficial reading, several of these verses appear to convey discrepant messages. Verses that speak of peace, forbearance, tolerance, sanctity of life, and freedom of religion are juxtaposed against verses that speak of military aggression.

Both of us agree that the seeming contraindications can be reconciled once a deeper exegetical interpretation is applied. How we each pursue this reconciliation seems to be the starting point for the vast differences in the entire ethical and jurisprudential outlooks we develop.

To understand these resulting differences, it is necessary to first assemble the verses relating to jihad, qital, and harb and apply to them a thematic exegesis. In doing so, Islamic jurists and scholars have discerned that several progressive phases of Quranic injunctions regarding the use of military force are apparent.

I. “Bear Patiently”

The first phase was characterized by non-violence and non-confrontation. During the Meccan period, Muhammad and his followers were forbidden by the Quran to respond with force to the persecution that they faced under their Quraysh opponents. They were instructed to repel aggression with forgiveness and to continue preaching their message with forbearance:

“Bear patiently against whatever they say, and take leave of them in a beautiful manner” (73:10)

“Repel evil with that which is better, then behold, the one with whom you have enmity shall be as if he were a loyal protecting friend” (41:34) (See also 7:199, 16:125).

Such non-violent discoursing was itself described as a jihad: “Do not listen to the unbelievers, but strive against them (Jahidhum) with the utmost striving, with this (Quran)” (25:52). When the oppression became unbearable, the allowed response was emigration, again described as a jihad: “For those who emigrated after being oppressed, then strove (Jahadu) and were patient, your Lord is forgiving, merciful” (16:110). Of note, the word jihad was even used for striving by unbelievers: “But if they strive (Jahadaka) to make you ascribe partners to Me that of which you have no knowledge, then obey them not” (29:8 and 31:15).

The Meccan verses of non-confrontation are significant for what they do not allow. They do not condone tactics of asymmetric warfare, such as stealth attacks, poisoning, or targeting the vulnerable.

You and your kind believe that the Meccan verses were merely a capitulation to political expedience. Being in the weaker position, the early Muslims could not have affected a military response to their opponents without being defeated. Yet, even if this perspective were correct, the right response would be to apply the Meccan approach of patient forbearance rather than terrorism.

II. “Permission to Fight”

The opposition of the Quraysh to the Prophet’s message grew to the point that the traditional protection of tribal relations was no longer enough to ensure the safety of the nascent Muslim community. At this point, the Prophet and his companions migrated to Medina. Yet the Quraysh continued their opposition, launching a series of battles against the Muslims in Medina. The Muslims needed to know their allowable response. The second phase, therefore, was marked by Quranic verses that gave Muslims permission to fight.

“Fight in the way of God against those who fight you, but do not transgress the limits; truly God loves not the transgressors” (2:190);

And “To those against whom war is made, permission is given (to fight), because they have been wronged… Did not God check one set of people by means of another, there would surely have been pulled down monasteries, churches, synagogues, and mosques, in which the name of God is commemorated in abundant measure” (22:39-40).

These verses established that fighting could be launched by Muslims as self-defence in response to wrongs committed against them. The permission of self-defence was not a call to arms, but a right granted in the face of oppression, attack, and religious persecution.

You would probably say here that the early battles fought by the Prophet against the Quraysh were not defensive, and that the Prophet instigated the conflicts. Indeed, there are some history books that support your view on this, and some that support its opposite. While history is contested for its veracity, geography does not lie. All we need to settle our dispute on this matter is a map of the region.

The distance between Mecca and Medina is about three-hundred miles. The battles that were fought between the Meccan Quraysh and the Medinan Muslims were named for their locations. They were Badr (sixty miles from Medina), Uhud (five miles from Medina) and Khandaq (the Trench, built at the outskirt of Medina). If the Muslim army was launching offensive battles, one is hard-pressed to explain how the Quraysh army managed to meet the offenders so close to their home each time.

While outlining the reasons for which force could be permitted, the Quran was emphatic in outlining reasons for which it could not, chief among them being matters of religion. Notably, the Quran primarily emphasizes the freedom of religion of non-Muslims against forcible coercion by Muslims, rather than the other way around:

“It is not required of you to set them on the right path, but God sets on the right path whom He pleases” (2:272)

“If your Lord willed, all who are in the earth would have believed together. Would you then compel people until they are believers?” (10:99) “If they turn away, we sent you not as a keeper over them. Nothing is incumbent upon you except the proclamation” (42:48). (See also 2:256, 3:20, 5:48, 6:104, 6:107, 13:31, 16:82, 16:125, 18:29, 26:4, 88:21, and 109:6).

Due to the sheer volume and persistent force of these verses, there has always been overwhelming agreement that jihad can never be used for the forced conversion of unbelievers to Islam.

III. “Stand Up Firmly For Justice”

The Quran makes it clear that even Muslims can be the source of transgression: “If two parties of the believers fall into conflict, make peace between them; but if one of them transgresses the limits against the other, then fight all of you together against the one that transgresses until it complies with the command of God. But if it complies, then make peace between them with justice and fairness” (49:9). The verse maintains a neutral position about the merits of the two groups’ argument.

The party that is to be collectively fought is the one that has transgressed the limits to achieve its ends. Thus, it is behaviour, not religious identity, that justifies a military intervention. Elsewhere, the Quran says:

“O you who believe! Stand up firmly for justice, as witnesses to God, even if it be against yourselves, your parents, or your kin” (4:135)

And “O you who believe! Stand out firmly for God, as witnesses to justice, and let not the hatred of others to you make you swerve to wrong and depart from justice” (5:8).

In a poignant Hadith, the Prophet Muhammad is reported to have said “Help your brother, whether he is the oppressor or the oppressed.” When his companions asked, “O messenger, it is all right to help him if he is the oppressed, but how can we help him if he is the oppressor?” The Prophet answered, “By preventing him from oppressing others” (Sahih Bukhari, vol 3, number 624).

This makes it apparent that the Islamic ethic of fighting has never supported an “us versus them” but rather a “right versus wrong” approach.

IV. “Do Not Transgress the Limits”

The Quranic verse that gave Muslims permission to fight (2:190) introduced the idea that the divine revelation was concerned not only with fighting for the right cause but also with right conduct (“but do not transgress the limits”). A corpus of Muslim jurisprudence and practice endeavoured to outline the restraints referred to by “the limits.”

The most important principle was discrimination, the need to differentiate in battle between combatants and non-combatants. The best known example is the command of the first caliph, Abu Bakr, who is reported to have said: “Do not act treacherously, disloyally, or neglectfully; do not mutilate; do not kill children or old men or women; do not cut down trees; do not slaughter sheep, cows or camels except for food; leave alone those who devote their lives to monastic services.”

The Quran talks about the just treatment for prisoners of war in several verses (See 8:71, 9:6, 47:4, and 76:8) and about forgiveness being superior to vengeance or even proportionality (see 16:126, 42:40, 5:45, 2:178). Muslim jurists additionally prohibit killing emissaries, servants, traders, travellers, journalists and aid workers.

Jurists have written to disallow using torture or abduction, using fire or flooding or poison as weapons, destroying shrines or graves or places of worship, attacking without giving fair notice, ignoring the risk of collateral damage (48:25), and on a vast range of other restrictions in the conduct of war.

In recent times, the worst of extremists among you exempt themselves from these principles by arguing that there are no innocents. You hold that all civilians in an enemy state, even children, are collectively responsible for the actions of their armies and governments and thus absolved of immunity.

There is no foundation for this principle in Islamic scripture, and it is a product only of your own rawest emotional reactions. The Quran is categorically against any notion of collective punishment: “No soul shall bear the burden of another” (53:38); “Every soul draws the meed of its acts on none but itself” (6:164). (See also 2:134, 2:141; 17:15, 35:18, and 39:7).

V. “Oppression Is Worse Than Killing”

After fighting three battles with the Quraysh, the Muslims decided that the best defence was a good peace agreement. The Muslims met the Quraysh at the valley of Hudaybiyah and the two parties agreed to a treaty (Sulh), stipulating an end to hostilities for ten years. Over the following year, more people converted to Islam than had done so over the prior eighteen years, indicating that peace time was always more conducive to the message of Islam than conflict.

Yet peace did not last. The following year, a tribe allied with the Quraysh massacred a tribe allied with the Muslims, including members who sought sanctuary within the Holy Mosque. The event signified a clear breach of the treaty.

It is in this context that the passages often referred to as “the verses of the sword” were revealed: “And kill them wherever you find them, and turn them out from where they have turned you out, for oppression is worse than killing” (2:191); and “When the forbidden months are past, then fight and kill the unbelievers wherever you find them, seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem” (9:5) (see also 8:60, 9:29, and 47:4).

These verses are the ones most often quoted by you to make your arguments. You have latched onto them because they seem, on a vacuous and de-contextualised reading, to espouse a message of perpetual pre-emptive warfare against all non-Muslims.

It is important to observe how the Prophet himself implemented these verses. If he had understood them the way you understand them, we would have expected all the Quraysh to have been killed during the conquest of Mecca. But this did not happen. Instead, your own history books tell us that no more than twelve Quraysh men lost their lives.

To all the other citizens of Mecca, the Prophet said:

“I say to you now as Joseph said to his brothers, ‘Let there be no blame upon you this day.’ Go, for you are free!”

Why does your interpretation produce such drastically different results? You like to omit the qualifying verses that are found all around the verses of the sword, which you often hide within the ellipses of your quotations.

Verse 2:191 is preceded by “Fight in the way of God against those who fight you, but do not transgress the limits” (2:190), and followed by “But if they cease, God is forgiving, merciful. Fight them until there is no more oppression (fitna) and there prevails faith in God; but if they cease, let there be no hostility except to those who practice oppression” (2:191-193).

Verse 9:5 is preceded by “The treaties are not dissolved with those unbelievers who have entered into alliance with you and have not subsequently failed you nor aided anyone against you” (9:4), and followed by “If one among the unbelievers asks you for asylum, grant him asylum so that he hears the word of God, then escort him to a place of safety” (9:6); “If they remain true to you, then remain true to them” (9:7); and “Will you not fight people who violated their oaths, plotted to expel the Messenger, and took the aggressive by being the first (to assault) you?” (9:13). Similar qualifying phrases are found before and after every instance of the verses commonly used to justify violent extremism.

When viewed in totality, these verses are understood to sanction a pre-emptive military expedition within the framework of a defensive war against a recurrently belligerent enemy.
The enemy’s crimes were initiating hostilities, expelling Muslims from their homes, violating treaties, and obstructing freedom of religion. Ironically, in the current time, there is no one more responsible for these crimes than yourselves. Your actions have produced the largest expulsion of Muslims from their homes in human history. But you absolve yourselves of this by saying that anyone who doesn’t agree with your actions isn’t Muslim in the first place (takfir).

VI. “Do You Believe In Only Part Of The Book?”

This brings us full circle to the point with which we started this letter. We stated earlier that how we reconcile the seeming contradictions of the war verses in the Quran determines our entire ethical outlook.

We achieve the reconciliation by recognising that the Quran endorses an iterative conditional approach to war. It allows non-confrontation, self-defence, humanitarian intervention, or pre-emptive expedition within a defensive war, each option made just or unjust by the severity of the context, and each to be guided always by strict regulations on right conduct.

You, on the other hand, take an entirely different approach. You believe that all of the earlier verses have been abrogated by the later verses of the sword. You believe that God revealed the earlier verses only as transitional options, but once the Prophet gained political and military power in Madinah, God revealed the final permanent option, making null and void the earlier verses.

This is a contention full of several shortcomings. First, it is hard to justify from within the scripture itself. As evidence for the concept of abrogation (Naskh), you frequently cite:

“None of Our revelations do We abrogate or cause to be forgotten, but We substitute something similar or better” (2:106).

However, many scholars understand this verse to be referring to the supersession of earlier books of revelation by later ones. The Quran in fact contains several verses that speak against the practice of picking from revealed texts selectively: “What, do you believe in only part of the Book, and disbelieve the rest?” (2:85)

“They pervert words from their contexts, and they have forgotten a portion of what they were reminded” (5:13)

“(They) have reduced the Quran to shreds” (15:91)

Even those scholars who accept the principle of abrogation disagree with the method and extent to which you apply it. By some counts, your interpretation would require the verses of the sword to have abrogated 124 other Quranic verses. This approach renders meaningless the majority of Prophet Muhammad’s life, tears the Quran to shreds and leaves a severely decimated text, and attributes to God qualities of deceit and fickleness that would be considered repugnant even from a human.

With the single thread of abrogation you have unravelled the entire fabric of Islamic morality. The crucial error is not your literalism but your selective literalism.

Lastly, even if we do accept the logic of abrogation as you propose it, it would be worth noting that verse 2:256 (“Let there be no compulsion in religion”) is generally regarded as having been revealed after the verses of the sword, and would therefore be considered as having abrogated them.

Conclusion

The Quran seems to recognise that providing a layered complexity to the ethical framework of war would leave it open to a dual understanding. Is peace to be the preferred, baseline, ideal state, with war as the conditional exception? Or is it to be the other way around?

The Quran answered this question in three ways. First, it recommended a solution to the very problem of disagreement among Muslims. Whenever there is a difference of opinion among the learned, the more merciful opinion is always to be chosen: “Follow the best sense of what has been revealed to you” (39:55);

“Those who listen to the Word, and follow the best (meaning) of it, are the ones whom God has guided” (39:18)

Second, it established the sanctity of life using words that could not have been more emphatic: “Whoever kills a person – unless it be for murder or for corruption (fasad) throughout the earth – it shall be as if he killed all of humanity. And whoever saves the life of one person, it shall be as if he saved the life of all humanity” (5:32).

Last, the Quran answers the question in the most unequivocal way it could possibly have chosen: by placing the ideal in the very name of the religion itself. “Islam”, derived from the root s-l-m, does indeed mean “peace.” It is what the word would have been understood to mean in that region before the Quran ever used it. Its other common definition, submission or alignment with the divine will, is its meaning in the religious sense.

It can be understood together as “the peace that comes when one submits his or her will to the Will of God.” In this sense, that Islam means peace should not be understood as a description but as a prescription.

So, Let Us Ask Again: Do You Hold The Most Authentic Interpretation Of Islam?

There is absolutely nothing authentic about what you have done.

These are our thoughts on the matter. What is good herein is from God. The mistakes are ours alone.

Assalam u Alaikum. Peace be upon you.

The Other Muslims.

Courtesy: The Muslim Vibe.

The post Open Letter: To Islamist Extremists, from the Other Muslims of the World appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Is Religious Terrorism a product of Western Modernity?

Thu, 23 Feb 2017 12:15:52 +0000

In the 21st century there is visibly an increase in religiously motivated terror attacks. Many of the radical groups identify themselves with radical Islam, but how did violence and religion evolve to this point?

Photo from ISIS taken in Ninive area, Iraq, in 2015 and published by the group on their web pages. Picture by Balkis Press ABACA/PA Images.

The world is currently facing a vicious, new form of international terrorism. The Islamic State (IS) has expressed its plans to attack Europe while recruiting a growing number of foreign fighters. In fact, a significant number of EU citizens are already engaged with IS both in Syria and in the EU. The attacks on Paris underline the scale and complexity of the current threat in Europe. Such brutal acts by religiously motived groups in western countries cause global outrage. People feel that their values and sovereignty are attacked. But how can this rise in religiously motivated violence be explained?

The literal meaning of the word ‘terror’ indicates the aim to change a political situation by spreading fear rather than causing material damage to the target. Looking at conventional warfare, material losses are the main goal, spreading fear is just the byproduct of these actions. ‘Terror’ on the other hand creates more fear than it causes material loss for the enemy. Spreading fear is therefore the whole story for terrorist groups and shows the disproportion of strength between the terrorists and their target, and the fear they, therefore, want to inspire.

Are terrorist attacks a new modern phenomenon?

In the 21st century there is visibly an increase in religiously motivated terror attacks. Many of the radical groups identify themselves with radical Islam, but how did violence and religion evolve to this point? Al-Qaeda, Boko Haram and ISIS, just to mention the most popular ones are causing fear and anxiety throughout the world. But are terrorist attacks a new modern phenomenon? Why are so many attacks religiously motivated?

The role of religion in politics has always been a difficult one. With the Peace of Westphalia being established in 1648, a new international system was introduced. Before that, religion was the main source of conflict and competition between states or kingdoms. The Westphalian order banished religion more and more from the political sphere, which was exacerbated by the processes of modernization and secularization, leading to the view that religion would soon disappear completely from politics and even from the lives of people.

One can say that without the banishment of religion, the modern state and the development of the present-day international system would not have been possible [1]. The state took the marginalization of religion and the loyalty of the population to God and transferred it to the State. The rising confidence in national institutions make the belief in a supernatural power obsolete.

The core features of the modern state are a reliable monetary system, a stable legal system and an apparatus, that can guarantee internal security [2]. As it is well known, the concept of the modern state has not emerged uniformly around the globe. The process of the modern state has a long history and has led to the disarmament of people and the centralization of executive power as well as the use of violence.[3] This reorganization of public violence and the state’s monopoly on violence is the central instrument to ensure everyday safety of citizens from random acts of force.

Terror attacks undermine this monopoly and create fear among the population. According to Zygmund Bauman, in modernity we build a moral distance. Due to the huge bureaucratic apparatus and its monopoly on violence, the modern state can use violence without its people really knowing. Hannah Arendt argues in a similar way in ‘Eichmann in Jerusalem’, where she describes that evil is not personified in one person, instead crimes can be committed by anyone, who follows orders and stops reflecting on their own actions.

The views of radical Islamist groups are as much shaped by western ideology as by their religious beliefs.

To use violence on a big scale you need a high degree of rationalization and process optimization. Waging war in modernity is all about logistics. The healthy soldier is the basis for the logistics of the military. The history to transform networks is fundamental to the history of warfare. Nazi Germany committed the worst acts of violence in history. The aim was to breed a new type of human being. The processes used there were highly modern. The gas chambers were part of modernity. Even though some people believe that being modern has only a positive connotation, in fact, there are many ways of being modern and some of them are monstrous.[4]

Like other modern political ideologies such as communism and Nazism, radical Islam is modern. The views of radical Islamist groups are as much shaped by western ideology as by their religious beliefs. The positivist view of modernity explains that when societies fail to inherit the findings of science, they become chaotic and divided. The progress of a society is based on its progress in science. As knowledge advances, so does humanity. Hence, every society has to go from a religious worldview to a metaphysical outlook, and from that to a scientific or positivistic world view.[5] At the end of this process the moral and political conflicts of the past will disappear.[6]

Unfortunately, reality is a little different, modern war is a by-product of the modern state. In history, wars were waged in the battlefield. The main goal was to raise mass armies, but not to target the civilian population. 9/11 has produced a new kind of warfare. These new conflicts arise from the interaction of old religious and ethnic divisions and the increased competition for natural resources and are waged by very unconventional means. This situation leads to a moral problem, due to the verticality here, it becomes challenging to distinguish civilians from combatants.

Countries in the Middle East inherited the modern state from Europe, but their societies weren’t adequately prepared for that change. The reason violence is still so dominant in those societies, has nothing to do with human beings having an irrepressible instinct for aggression, but the simple fact that no substitute for this arbiter in international affairs has appeared in the political scene.[7] Political-religious crises occur especially where old segregation patterns erode without being replaced by effective new ones. This is especially true when the balance of power between different groups shifts or new actors and elites emerge, who no longer respect the current power distribution. One of the main examples of such an erosion of established religious conflict is the emergence of radical fundamentalist movements in the 20th and 21st centuries.[8]

Hannah Arendt argues that the proliferation of techniques and machines menaces the existence of whole nations. According to her, violence can destroy power but not create it. The fact is that the decrease of power will increase violence. Governments and organizations, fearing their power is slipping away, won’t resist the temptation to use violence in trying to restore their power.[9]

The less the population is used to political violence in a particular state, the greater the public shock after an act of terrorism.

However, the terrorists hope that even though they can barely dent the enemy’s material the so inspired fear and chaos will cause the enemy, to misuse its strength.[10] To achieve their aim, they present the modern state with an impossible challenge. The less the population is used to political violence in a particular state, the greater the public shock after an act of terrorism. Killing 130 people in Paris draws far more attention than killing thousands in Nigeria or Iraq. Yuval Noah Harari calls this the paradox of the modern state: the very success of modern states in preventing political violence makes them particularly vulnerable to terrorism.[11]

The power of the state is defined by its monopoly of the legitimate use of force.[12] In other words, state action and policy always relies upon the deployment of police, military, the prison system and so on. Without the legitimate ability to deploy violence, modern states cannot function.[13]

Violence can be separated into objective and subjective violence. Subjective violence can be seen in the crimes that dictators and authoritarian regimes commit. You can easily locate the evil, the subject, which caused the violence. Objective violence is more difficult to locate. It is more difficult to identify the guilty subject in these crimes, e.g. in the million who died as a result of globalization.[14]

The use of terror by Islamist organizations has very little to do with traditional Islam, but is more related to asymmetric warfare used by modern revolutionary movements

For many scholars, radical Islam is a western construction. During the Cold War, religious movements in the Middle East were funded, armed and used as buffers against the Soviets.[15] Even though Islamists define themselves as anti- modern, radical Islam is evidently a by-product of the late modern globalization. You can see that in Al- Qaeda’s use of technology, offshore financial institutions and in ISIS´s use of the internet.

The use of terror by Islamist organizations has very little to do with traditional Islam, but is more related to asymmetric warfare used by modern revolutionary movements.[16] Therefore, suicide bombing has nothing to do with anything religous, but falls into strategic terrorism, justified by religious ideology.[17] Cheap and highly effective, suicide bombing is the technique of choice for groups confronting overwhelming conventional military force.[18]

Those who join violent extremist groups rarely have formal training in the religion they are trying to defend. Often they don’t even have a deep understanding of the religion and their knowledge is shaped mostly by online sources or discussions with other extremists.

Reports say that those drawn to religious violence are usually raised in secular families and households.[19] However, many foreign fighters were diagnosed with mental problems before joining ISIS. An aggravating factor is that most of the recruits have had criminal records before joining the organization, starting from petty crimes to more serious ones.

Terrorist cells ready to perpetrate a terrorist attack are mostly domestic and locally based in European countries. ISIS’s training of recruits consists of imported warfare techniques in the use of weapons, explosives and specific killing techniques.

With the shift of conventional warfare to asymmetric warfare the techniques and technology that terrorists use, are very modern and contemporary. The inability of the west to establish functional democracies in regions like the Middle East, enabled radical religious groups to emerge. With the further development of globalization these ideas were easy to be spread and members easy to mobilize. Even though Islamists define themselves as anti- modern, the way they wage war is evidently a by-product of the late modern globalization.

(Feodora Hamza studied Islamic Studies in Freiburg, Germany and finished her Masters in Religion and Conflict at Lancaster University, United Kingdom. She is living in the Hague).

This article was first published on openDemocracy.

[1] Thomas, Scott M.: Taking religious and cultural pluralism seriously – The global resurgence of religion and the transformation of international society in International Relations Theory and Religion, Palgrave MacMillian, New York 2003 S.25
[2] Ibid.
[3] Kössler, Reinhart: The Modern Nation State and Regimes of Violence: Reflections on the Current Situation, http://www.ritsumei.ac.jp/acd/cg/ir/college/bulletin/e-vol.2/kossler.pdf, Date: 21.02.2017, p.3
[4] Gray, John: Al Qaeda: And What it Means to be Modern, Faber, 2003, p2.
[5] Gray, John: Al Qaeda: And What it Means to be Modern, Faber, 2003, p. 29
[6] Ibid.
[7] Arendt, Hannah: On Violence, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1970, p.5
[8] Ibid.
[9] Arendt, Hannah: On Violence, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1970, p. 87
[10] Harari, Yuval Noah: The Theatre of Terror, The Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jan/31/terrorism-spectacle-how-states-respond-yuval-noah-harari-sapiens?CMP=share_btn_tw Download: 21.02.2017
[11] Ibid.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Zizek, Slavoj: Blasphemische Gedanken: Islam und Moderne, Pocket Book, 2015, p.12
[15] Gray, John: Al Qaeda: And What it Means to be Modern, Faber, 2003, p. 16
[16] Gray, John: Al Qaeda: And What it Means to be Modern, Faber, 2003, p. 18
[17] Ibid.
[18] Kricheli, Ilana; Rosner, Yotam; Mendelboim, Aviad; Schweitzer, Yoram: Suicide Bombings in 2016: The Highest Number of Fatalities, Download: 21.02.2017 http://www.css.ethz.ch/en/services/digital-library/articles/article.html/7e6eb677-ec57-4ad8-bde5-3b62c173898f
[19] Senzai, Farid: Isis and its Violence, Islamic Monthly, Download: 21.02.2017, http://theislamicmonthly.com/isis-and-its-violence/

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