Islamic Terrorism: How Should Christians and the West Respond?

by Rev. Colin Chapman

2005 Redcliffe Lectures in World Christianity, 14 March

When I suggested the title for this lecture some months ago, I had no idea how relevant it would be for an audience in Gloucester in March, 2005. On 1 March, the headline in The Times was 'The shoe bomber from a Gloucester grammar', and we read of the shock and dismay of the Muslim community in this city over the conviction of the quiet and earnest Saajid Badat in the Old Bailey for having conspired to blow up an airliner over the Atlantic in December 2001.

How should Christians and the West be responding to this new phenomenon that is called 'Islamic Terrorism'? We know how George Bush and the American administration launched their 'war on terror' in response to the attacks of 9/11, and how, having failed to catch Osama bin Laden in his mountain stronghold in Afghanistan or Pakistan, they turned their attention on Iraq, with the help of their only ally, Britain. We're no doubt very aware of the public debate that has been going on going on in our country in recent weeks about the powers that the government believes it needs to detain suspected terrorists. If there is a wide spectrum of opinions about the war in Iraq and the threat of terrorism at home, we probably have to admit that Christians are probably almost as divided as the rest of our society over these issues In this context all I can do is to present a personal opinion, as a Christian who is now living in the West but who has also lived for a number of years in the Islamic world and tried to engage seriously in the study of Islam. I will try to explain how and why I have come to this opinion and hope that this will stimulate a vigorous debate.

Before getting into the subject, however, I want to make three points by way of introduction. Firstly, we need to be cautious about the expression 'Islamic terrorism'. I imagine that all of us would be upset if we heard Muslims speaking about 'Christian Terrorism in Northern Ireland'. A number of people in recent years who happen to be Muslims have engaged in acts of terrorism, motivated by convictions that are firmly based on their Islamic beliefs. There is some justification for describing these actions as 'Islamic', since those who have carried them out claim openly that they are acting in the name of Islam. But we probably ought to be careful about attaching the word 'Islamic' in such a blanket way to every terrorist action carried out by Muslims. Journalists have referred to Pakistan's nuclear weapons as 'Islamic'. But they would never speak of America's nuclear weapons as 'Christian' or to Israel's as 'Jewish'. In the rest of this lecture, therefore, I will try to avoid speaking of 'Islamic terrorism'.

Secondly, if at any state in this lecture you think I am showing too much sympathy for terrorist actions carried out by Muslims, I want to declare at the outset my condemnation of terrorism of every kind in the strongest possible terms. The killing of innocent people through calculated acts of violence is repugnant and abhorrent, and especially when they are carried out in the name of religion. What we have been witnessing in recent years is the emergence of a new style of terrorism whose 'primary purpose is not to defeat or even to weaken the enemy militarily but to gain publicity and to inspire fear-a psychological victory' (Bernard Lewis. 1).

In what follows I am trying to enter into the minds of terrorists and understand what they are so angry about. But if I suggest any sympathy with any of their grievances, I am not in any way condoning or justifying their murderous activities. I take it for granted that a robust approach is required to the threat of terrorism in this or any other country. A firm stand against terrorism, however, needs to go hand in hand with serious reflection about the root cause of terrorism.

Thirdly, therefore, I believe we need to recognise that in many, if not most situations, terrorism is the angry and violent response of individuals or communities to violence that has been done to them. What has been done to them in the first place, however, is not often called 'terrorism', largely because it is carried out not by individuals but by governments and their armies.

Unfortunately observers are often quick to condemn the terrorism, but slow to say anything critical about the actions or the situations to which the terrorists are responding. So, for example, we don't hesitate to speak about Palestinian suicide bombers as terrorists. But we don't describe a helicopter gunship attack that kills an elderly disabled Palestinian religious leader on the steps of a mosque in Gaza with a rocket to the head as 'terrorism'. We were appalled and horrified by what happened in Beslan last September. But some commentators at the time saw this atrocity as a response to the brutalisation of Chechnya by the Russian army. Hizbullah was formed in Lebanon as a resistance movement in response to the Israeli invasion of 1982 and its continued occupation of southern Lebanon. Hamas was created in 1987 during the first Intifada in response to Israel's continued occupation of the West Bank and Gaza as an alternative to the more secular approach of Arafat and the PLO. They introduced suicide bombings after a Jewish settler, Baruch Goldstein, killed 29 worshipers at the Mosque in Hebron in February '94. What I'm suggesting is that terrorism is not the root of the problem; it is usually a reaction to a perceived injustice, and therefore needs to be seen as a symptom of other underlying problems.

How then do we attempt to address the question? What we need to find out is: when and why did Islamist start resorting to terrorism, and when and why did they start directing their terror against the West? And going further back, if terrorism has been practised by a minority within the larger Islamist movement, how and why did Islamism develop in the 20th Century and why did some Islamists come to the decision that violence and terrorism were justified? I suggest that we need to proceed by stages, and that there are five crucial questions which need to be asked.