Sheer stupidity to ignore the religious in Muslim terrorism

This is really just a simple matter of semantics. The way people identify themselves gives us an understanding of how they perceive themselves.

If a person describes himself as French, we know that being French is a component of his identity. If he also happens to commit terrorist acts on behalf of the identity he has claimed (being French), then we would call him a French terrorist.

Because a few (very few) Muslims commit acts of terror in the name of their religion (religion being an identifier as nationality is an identifier), they are called Muslim or Islamic terrorists.

The problem arises when people take the benign identifier (French, Muslim) and attach it to particular actions or behaviors (terrorist acts) and then begin to use the resulting term to define all who claim membership in the specific identifier group.

The people who blow things up to protest what they perceive as wrongs against their society are not the ones who affix the labels. They just do what they do. It is the observers -- WE -- who do the defining, categorizing, judging, and labeling.

President Obama understands this and is attempting to dial down the hostility by declining to use the labels we've all become so accustomed to that we don't even question them anymore.

"It is because the Western system has failed to provide meaning, fulfillment and justice,..."

Is the failure of the Western system also the reason why millions of people are streaming into Europe and the Americas from Asia and Africa?

Why are they risking their lives to migrate to such a failed system?

With all respect to the esteemed Rav Steinsaltz, I could not disagree more vociferously. Islam is not the motivation behind terrorism. Rather it is dissatisfaction with the failures of both capitalism and Western thought to address either injustice or the lack we feel within our lives. It is for this very reason that we are witnessing a reversion to fundamentalism not only in Islam, but in the Christian and Jewish communities as well.

It is because the Western system has failed to provide meaning, fulfillment and justice, that young Jewish men and women from the United States are flocking to squat hilltops in the West Bank and training guns on their Arab neighbors. It is not because of anything inherent in the Jewish faith.

So too for Islam. It is not because there is anything necessarily inherent in Islam that encourages violence, at least any more so than Christianity or Judaism. It is only because we fail to provide meaningful articulations and expressions of our values that are equally as potent, meaningful and fulfilling as radicalism tends to be for the young and impressionable.

DITLD:

(Boo-hoo Radley!)

I'm losing you here. How does Boo Radley figure in this.

Yours,
Scout

R. Steinsaltz writes:

So if the President decides to deal with terrorists as a general, undefined group - without specifying or defining their particulars -- that may be his political decision (right or wrong).
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Do we refer to the murderer of Dr. Tiller as a "Christian terrorist"?

The report refers to Al Qaeda, Al Qaeda-related groups, etc. I can't see why we can't label the terrorists, thugs, murderers, lunatics according to their name, as it were.

There is something wrong with labeling them as "Islamic." The majority of Muslims are not terrorists; their "understanding of Islam" differs from that of those who kill in its name. The distinction is important to keep in mind.

Muslim says:
“Actually, the moving power of their deeds is the wars, occupations, and civilian deaths that the United States has caused in Muslim lands.”

I suppose it was the USA who provoked the Muslims to invade the Middle East, North Africa and Spain. Let us face the reality of the situation. The Arabs of the Arabian Peninsula wished to establish an empire using religion as the rallying cry. Their leaders were interested in religion only to the extent it enabled them to recruit the primitive ignorant Bedouin tribesmen to do their bidding in fighting and enslaving the indigenous populations while they accumulated power and wealth in the process. Almost every present day Arab ruler derives his legitimacy through his claimed relation to the initiator of the drive.

Muslim1908

Islamic terrorism, especially in the form of suicide bombing is a nihilstic adaptation of an extreme religious orthodoxy, dislocated, in the pitiless cultural churn of twenty-first century secularism.

(Boo-hoo Radley!)

This is a modern Islamic innovation, which is as real and as valid as all of the other modern innovations, which terrorists seek to stamp out; and therefore, it is valid to call it Islamic.

It is the responsibillty of Islam to reply to this new terroristic nihilism, which has now become well-established as Islam's most sensational feature, and its signature.

For political reasons, Obama might not want to say the words "Islamic Terrorism," but practically speaking, that is a word people use to mean when a devout Muslim detonates a bomb in a public place in the name of Allah and in the name of Islam.

Perhaps this is not mainstream Islam. But it happens alot, enough so that it has become a flamboyant and sensational feature of modern Islam, and it is not credible to suppose that people would not notice much less react with extreme revulsion.

I wish that Islamic people would try and see it that way. It is a problem for us all. It is a problem for Islam because it is the reputation that is being tagged to Islam, whether it is justified or not, and once a reputation is ruined, it is very hard to get it back. Islam NEEDS to earn its reputation back, or else just learn to live in a world where people are afraid of Islam, and are afraid to have Muslims standing or sitting near them.

Actually, the moving power of their deeds are the wars, occupations, and civilian deaths that the United States has caused in Muslim lands. This is the primary mover, and religion is used "after the fact" to justify and motivate terrorists. By focusing on religion alone, you ignore the main political problem and you reinforce bigotry against Muslims.

Mr. Steinsaltz, for more on "terrorism", download these free books from The Wisdom Fund http://www.twf.org/Library/FREEbooks.pdf

And what about "the army of God" — http://www.twf.org/Y2003/1016-GodsArmy.html ??

The fact is that state sponsored terrorists have done more damage than non-state terrorists — http://www.twf.org/Library/Terrorism.html

That's why the US opposes the definition proposed by the UN High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change "as any action intended to cause death or serious bodily harm to civilians or non-combatants with the purpose of intimidating a population or compelling a government or an international organisation to do, or abstain from, any act."

Enver Masud
Founder, The Wisdom Fund

On the other hand, when we come from the realm of politics to the realm of reality, it is sheer stupidity to ignore the religious ingredient in Muslim terrorism.

That is because their understanding of Islam is the real moving power behind their deeds.

- Adin Steinsaltz

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It is also sheer stupidity to ignore the political, economic and reasons why they invoke Islam in trying to get Muslims on their side and for their cause.

Terrorists who invoke Islam are trying to play on Muslim realisation this and that is not just or right, and Muslim guilt for not doing anything about it.

Well said Mr. Steinsaltz. Muslim terrorism has been fortified by the current political movement to airbrush the deadly nature of the Muslim Terrorists' attacks against humanity. This political movement has given the Muslim terrorists a political cloak of invisibility. Denying that the Muslem religion plays no part in terrorist attacks is like saying the earth is flat.