The Terrorists' Motivation: Islam

It is nearly seven years since September 11, 2001 - and since that horrific day we have witnessed numerous additional attacks by Islamic terrorists in many countries around the globe. In the face of a seemingly never-ending supply of suicidal killers, many still do not understand the motivation of the terrorists. Commentators are eager to offer a bevy of pseudo-explanations (poverty, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Kashmir etc.) while ignoring the motivation the terrorists themselves openly proclaim: Islam.

The near silence about the true role of Islam in motivating Islamic terrorists has two main causes: multiculturalism (in secular, democratic countries) and religion (as in Islamic republics). Multiculturalism asserts that all cultures are equal and therefore none may criticize another; intellectuals and politicians in such secular democracies are therefore reluctant to declare the obvious superiority of secular, democratic culture to Islamic culture; even the faithful of non-Islamic culture are reluctant to indict another religion as the cause of a massive evil. But if we are to identify the fundamental cause of the terrorists' actions, we must understand at least two fundamental premises of the Islam the terrorists kill for.

Firstly, Islam, like all religions, rejects reason as a means of gaining knowledge and guiding action; it holds that all important truths are grasped by faith in supernatural beings and sacred texts. The holy Koran explicitly states that knowledge comes from revelation, not thinking. [Christianity in pure form entails a similar rejection of reason, but it has been heavily diluted and secularized since the Renaissance]. Islam advocates the subordination of every sphere of life to religious
dogma, including the legal system, politics, economics, and family life; the word "Islam" means literally: submission; a faithful to Islam is not supposed to think independently but to selflessly subordinate oneself to the dictates of Islam, and hence to its theocratic representatives. Mankind had gone through such period of time before in ancient Europe under the reign of orthodox (catholic) Christianity; historians have marked that period as the “Dark Ages”.

Secondly, as with any religion that seeks converts, a derivative tenet of Islam is that it should be imposed either by material inducement or by force – whatever is applicable to any particular case (you cannot convince someone of the non-rational by arguments, debates). The Koran is replete with calls to take up arms in its name: "fight and slay the Pagans wherever you find them … those who reject our signs shall soon be cast into the fire … those who disbelieve, garments of fire will be cut out for them and boiling fluid will be poured over on their heads . . . as to the deviators, they are the fuel of hell."

These ideas easily lead to fanaticism and terrorism. In fact, what is often referred to as the "fanaticism" of many Muslims is explicitly endorsed by their religion. Consider the following characteristics of religious fanatics. The fanatic demands unquestioning obedience to religious dogma - so does Islam. The fanatic cannot be reasoned with,
because he rejects reason - so does Islam. The fanatic eagerly embraces any call to impose his dogma by force on those who will not adopt it voluntarily - so does Islam. The terrorists are not "un-Islamic" bandits who have "hijacked a great religion"; thus the terrorists, the fanatic Muslims, are consistent and serious followers of their religion.

It is true that many Muslims who live in the secular democratic countries (viz. India, UK, USA etc.) reject religious fanaticism and are law-abiding and even loyal citizens; but this is because they have volitionally accepted some of the important values secular democracies stand for, namely, respect for reason, a belief in individual rights (right to life n property, freedom of speech n expression) and the need for separation between the church and the state. It is only to the extent that these civil Muslims depart from their religion - and from a society that imposes it - that they achieve prosperity, freedom, and peace.

In the recent times, there has been more and more of a call for a "War of Ideas" - an intellectual campaign to win the "hearts and minds" of the Islamic world that will discourage and discredit Islamic terrorism.
Unfortunately, the centerpiece of this campaign so far has been to appeal to Muslims with claims that Islam is perfectly consistent with ideals that the civil world stand for, and inconsistent with terrorism. The so-called moderate Muslim leaders are being groveled to strongly repudiate terrorism – with little success, alas! [These Muslims leaders have focused little energy on damning Islamic fanaticism, and much on the alleged sins of the governments of the USA, UK, Israel, India et al]

Such a campaign cannot work: since insofar as these "moderates" accept Islam as a `state policy’, as a socio-political force to bind a collective hoard of Muslims, they cannot convincingly oppose violence in its name. A true "War of Ideas" would be one in which we
proclaim loudly and with moral certainty the secular values we stand for: reason, individual rights (inalienable right of an individual human being to life and property) and freedom (inalienable right of an individual to freedom of speech and expression), material prosperity and personal happiness on this earth.