Guardian:'Call them criminals, terrorists but don't call them Muslims'

[titantoo]

'Call them criminals, terrorists but don't call them Muslims'
Maev Kennedy
Monday July 11, 2005
Guardian

Outside Euston station, the bells were pealing from St Pancras parish church across the road - a cheerful, normal, Sunday morning sound. But things are far from normal at the church, which stands 30 yards from the hoarding hiding the forensic team still picking through the shreds of the number 30 bus, and above the tunnels linking the King's Cross to Russell Square tube line.

The congregation of around 150 people - three times the usual attendance - had to stoop under red and white scene-of-accident tape to hear their parish priest order them to continue to enjoy living and working in London.

"This is not a time for many words," he said in his sermon, urging them to rejoice in the capital's rich diversity of cultures, traditions, ethnic groups and faiths. "There is one small practical thing that we can all do. We can name the people who did these things as criminals or terrorists. We must not name them as Muslims."

On Thursday, Father Paul Hawkins had watched the church fill with familiar faces and strangers.

The volunteers kept the tea urn going all day and evening. Strangers hugged one another, or just sat for a while looking into space. By evening Fr Hawkins had decided that yesterday's eucharist must be a memorial service for the dead, the injured, the bereaved, and perhaps the most wretched - the tormented families and friends of the missing.

Just before the service, Greg Tassel, the tenor in the choir, whose beautiful singing of the Fauré requiem left many in tears, revealed that Jenny Nicholson, a friend of his, known to have been in the area at the time, was still missing. His voice never quavered.

David Karunanithy, a regular in the congregation, was walking across Tavistock Square when the bus bomb went off, and spent time afterwards comforting a woman who had been injured and left deafened by the bus bomb blast, waiting for medical help to arrive.

He was shocked to learn, 24 hours later, how many had died in the bomb. "It is important for people who live and work around here to confront the situation," he said. "It is important not to become paranoid but to try to overcome our fears."

[titantoo]

Comment
The label of Catholic terror was never used about the IRA
Fundamentalism is often a form of nationalism in religious disguise
Karen Armstrong
Monday July 11, 2005
Guardian

Last year I attended a conference in the US about security and intelligence in the so-called war on terror and was astonished to hear one of the more belligerent participants, who as far as I could tell had nothing but contempt for religion, strongly argue that as a purely practical expedient, politicians and the media must stop referring to "Muslim terrorism". It was obvious, he said, that the atrocities had nothing to do with Islam, and to suggest otherwise was not merely inaccurate but dangerously counterproductive. Rhetoric is a powerful weapon in any conflict. We cannot hope to convert Osama bin Laden from his vicious ideology; our priority must be to stem the flow of young people into organisations such as al-Qaida, instead of alienating them by routinely coupling their religion with immoral violence. Incorrect statements about Islam have convinced too many in the Muslim world that the west is an implacable enemy. Yet, as we found at the conference, it is not easy to find an alternative for referring to this terrorism; however, the attempt can be a salutary exercise that reveals the complexity of what we are up against.

We need a phrase that is more exact than "Islamic terror". These acts may be committed by people who call themselves Muslims, but they violate essential Islamic principles. The Qur'an prohibits aggressive warfare, permits war only in self-defence and insists that the true Islamic values are peace, reconciliation and forgiveness. It also states firmly that there must be no coercion in religious matters, and for centuries Islam had a much better record of religious tolerance than Christianity.

Like the Bible, the Qur'an has its share of aggressive texts, but like all the great religions, its main thrust is towards kindliness and compassion. Islamic law outlaws war against any country in which Muslims are allowed to practice their religion freely, and forbids the use of fire, the destruction of buildings and the killing of innocent civilians in a military campaign. So although Muslims, like Christians or Jews, have all too often failed to live up to their ideals, it is not because of the religion per se.

We rarely, if ever, called the IRA bombings "Catholic" terrorism because we knew enough to realise that this was not essentially a religious campaign. Indeed, like the Irish republican movement, many fundamentalist movements worldwide are simply new forms of nationalism in a highly unorthodox religious guise. This is obviously the case with Zionist fundamentalism in Israel and the fervently patriotic Christian right in the US.

In the Muslim world, too, where the European nationalist ideology has always seemed an alien import, fundamentalisms are often more about a search for social identity and national self-definition than religion. They represent a widespread desire to return to the roots of the culture, before it was invaded and weakened by the colonial powers.

Because it is increasingly recognised that the terrorists in no way represent mainstream Islam, some prefer to call them jihadists, but this is not very satisfactory. Extremists and unscrupulous politicians have purloined the word for their own purposes, but the real meaning of jihad is not "holy war" but "struggle" or "effort." Muslims are commanded to make a massive attempt on all fronts - social, economic, intellectual, ethical and spiritual - to put the will of God into practice.

Sometimes a military effort may be a regrettable necessity in order to defend decent values, but an oft-quoted tradition has the Prophet Muhammad saying after a military victory: "We are coming back from the Lesser Jihad [ie the battle] and returning to the Greater Jihad" - the far more important, difficult and momentous struggle to reform our own society and our own hearts.

Jihad is thus a cherished spiritual value that, for most Muslims, has no connection with violence. Last year, at the University of Kentucky, I met a delightful young man called Jihad; his parents had given him that name in the hope that he would become not a holy warrior, but a truly spiritual man who would make the world a better place. The term jihadi terrorism is likely to be offensive, therefore, and will win no hearts or minds.

At our conference in Washington, many people favoured "Wahhabi terrorism". They pointed out that most of the hijackers on September 11 came from Saudi Arabia, where a peculiarly intolerant form of Islam known as Wahhabism was the state religion. They argued that this description would be popular with those many Muslims who tended to be hostile to the Saudis. I was not happy, however, because even though the narrow, sometimes bigoted vision of Wahhabism makes it a fruitful ground for extremism, the vast majority of Wahhabis do not commit acts of terror.

Bin Laden was not inspired by Wahhabism but by the writings of the Egyptian ideologue Sayyid Qutb, who was executed by President Nasser in 1966. Almost every fundamentalist movement in Sunni Islam has been strongly influenced by Qutb, so there is a good case for calling the violence that some of his followers commit "Qutbian terrorism." Qutb urged his followers to withdraw from the moral and spiritual barbarism of modern society and fight it to the death.

Western people should learn more about such thinkers as Qutb, and become aware of the many dramatically different shades of opinion in the Muslim world. There are too many lazy, unexamined assumptions about Islam, which tends to be regarded as an amorphous, monolithic entity. Remarks such as "They hate our freedom" may give some a righteous glow, but they are not useful, because they are rarely accompanied by a rigorous analysis of who exactly "they" are.

The story of Qutb is also instructive as a reminder that militant religiosity is often the product of social, economic and political factors. Qutb was imprisoned for 15 years in one of Nasser's vile concentration camps, where he and thousands of other members of the Muslim Brotherhood were subjected to physical and mental torture. He entered the camp as a moderate, but the prison made him a fundamentalist. Modern secularism, as he had experienced it under Nasser, seemed a great evil and a lethal assault on faith.

Precise intelligence is essential in any conflict. It is important to know who our enemies are, but equally crucial to know who they are not. It is even more vital to avoid turning potential friends into foes. By making the disciplined effort to name our enemies correctly, we will learn more about them, and come one step nearer, perhaps, to solving the seemingly intractable and increasingly perilous problems of our divided world.

· Karen Armstrong is author of Islam: a Short History

karmstronginfo@btopenworld.com

[Rostonhall]

That's one of the first things that was said about these cowards, they aren't muslim, they're just terrorists. But, I'm afraid it's not going to stop the average man in the street mistrusting anyone they see as Muslim. It happened during the IRA campaign as any Irishman will tell you. My step-father, who looks so very Irish, used to get stopped every single day on his way to work at Bush House (the B.B.C.). He stopped taking his lunch with him because he lost count of the times the police wanted to blow his bag up as a 'suspect' package. When he came to visit me there were places even I told him to keep quiet and not speak at all. I lived in a Garrison town and his Irish accent would have brought mod-plod (the Ministry of Defence Police) running!!! This is a very unhappy fact of life.

London is a wonderful multi-cultural city and we must try not to let the terrorist cause that to breakdown. If we do they have won!!!

Rose

[titantoo]

Originally Posted by Rostonhall

It happened during the IRA campaign as any Irishman will tell you. My step-father, who looks so very Irish, used to get stopped every single day
Rose

Yes...but was he stopped because he was mistaken for Irish or Catholic?
I think there is an important difference.

[Rostonhall]

Quite right, Danny was stopped because he was Irish not because he was a Catholic

Rose

[MadeInOz]

It is true that not all muslims are terrorists by any means, but a greater majority of terrorists claim to be muslim... So what conclusion are we meant to draw from this? :P

[Rostonhall]

No different conclusion than all IRA bombers being Catholic, and they carried out their bombing campaign for over 30 years, only 9/11 stopped them when their funds, mostly from the USA, dried up!!!

Rose

[cinderella2004]

If Al-Qaeda is an Islamic Extremest group following the orders of their Islamic Extremest leaders are they not then Islamic Extremests? To say they have nothing to do with Islam is a little like pretending not to see the 300 lb. pink elephant sitting next to you in the living room. Al-Qaeda follows a militant form of Islam, they believe it is the "true" form of Islam. They may be the minority but they are what they are. I will hope that "real" Islamic leadership is doing every single thing in their power to stop Al-Qaeda and the like.

[haswtch]

This much I know and not much more: Waiting for him in the visiting room, I used to pick up the Bible to read because I am the kind of person that would rather read the back of a cereal box (no offense to the Bible) than have nothing to read. Anyhow I enjoy the Bible.
Well, the English language Bible has gone missing, and my Spanish is not that good, so I've started picking up the Qur'an (sp?). And I have found I draw the same comfort and the same essential moral message- peace and decency.
I suppose the power-hungry can twist either book to suit their own needs, in fact, I KNOW they can.
But somewhere Out There, I picture Jesus and Mohammed hanging out together, sometimes weeping and sometimes laughing because sometimes you just have to laugh, and saying to each other, "Holy f##%, do you believe this s^&*?"
and that is my blasphemy for today, kids.