Marc Sageman, a psychologist and a longtime government consultant, wrote in the journal Terrorism and Political Violence in 2014: “After all this funding and this flurry of publications, with each new terrorist incident we realize that we are no closer to answering our original question about what leads people to turn to political violence…The same worn-out questions are raised over and over again, and we still have no compelling answers.”
There is an answer. And it is not deeply buried-except in our unwillingness to speak to truth for fear of hurting the feelings of some people. Lots of people-perhaps millions. We don’t want to ask “Is there something in Islam, in its ethical teachings that calls to people who murder in the name of a religion?”
Why? Why do we choose to be silent and in too many cases- silenced by a media campaign called Islamophobia? When did we in the West allow ourselves to be silenced for fear of hurting feelings? I should think that those who have been murdered in the name of Islam, for that is what the terrorists say when they murder innocents, would have preferred that their feelings had been hurt rather than be murdered by those who have clearly declared their abhorrence of the West.
It was a mere eighty years ago, when the world convulsed under the hatred of Nazism. When the Germans and then the rest of Europe, America, Canada, Australia- the West- turned a blind eye to the hate that led to the murder and incineration of a people. It was a case of ignorantia affecta, willful blindness. Some became deaf, dumb and blind out of fear of reprisal. Too many believed that the Jewish people were getting their just deserts. The media was also deeply involved in the silence- a gross sin of omission.
We seem afraid to speak about the underlying ethic of Islam, an ethic that is diametrically opposed to the teachings of the ethic that underpins democracy. Perhaps it brings back memories of George W. Bush declaring a Clash of Cultures after 9/11. But it was. And is. And more than that, it is a clash of ethical systems; one that teaches care for another for we are born with equal intrinsic value and one that states that we are not all equal in value; that there are some who are better. Muslims are better than the infidel-the Jew the Christian the Yazidi.
While we fight in the West for equal rights for women, breaking the glass ceiling, women in Islam have no human rights, let alone civil. While we fight to stop sexual assault, Islam teaches that wives and women “inappropriately” dressed can be raped. We have witnessed this in Denmark, Sweden Germany and now Austria.
While the ethic underpinning the West teaches that we have free will-rights and responsibilities, Islam teaches the need to submit.
While the teachings of the Judeo/Christian ethic teaches the need to care for the other, the stranger, Islam sadly, does not. There’s no room for tolerance of others in Islam because of its beliefs in the supremacy of Islam. And too many Muslim countries teach this lack of tolerance in their schools and mosques-and those teachings have come with them to the West.
We want to close our ears and eyes to these truths. Why? To what end? Because it is certainly not helpful in our search for root causes for terrorism. Jesus called out to the downtrodden to teach them the golden rule. Islam calls out to the downtrodden by feeding their hurt feelings-their anger. It calls to them come to them for you will be better than others.
In the year 2000 Bernard Lewis wrote about the Muslims: “If they can abandon grievances and victimhood, settle their differences, and join their talents, energies and resources in a common endeavor, then they can once again make the Middle East, in modern times as it was in antiquity and in the Middle Ages, a major center of civilization. For the time being the choice is their own.”
Sadly, they have chosen to remain victims with grievances. They cannot settle their own differences. They will not care for each other, let alone the other. We will not be able to stop attacks against the West by looking for root causes outside Islam. The root cause of terror is within the ethic of Islam, itself, and it is an ethic that is in conflict with the ethic of the West.
