Faith and Common Sense: Blaming Islam For Anti-Islamic Terrorism

Frankly, anyone who seriously argues that the idea of religiously sanctioned warfare originated with Islam really has no business posing as a scholar. Human beings were looking to their holy scriptures to justify various acts of violence long before the Prophet Muhammad was ever born.

Ahmadiyya Times | News Watch | US Desk
Source/Credit: MiddleEastProgress.Org
By Matt Duss | Aug 9, 2011

Ever since Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik murdered 77 people on July 22, the members of America’s Islamophobia Industry — many of whom, like Daniel Pipes, Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, were quoted by name in Breivik’s manifesto — have been at pains to demonstrate why their efforts to advertise a war between Islam and the West had nothing whatsoever to do with Breivik’s decision to become a soldier in that war.

It takes a very special sort of person, however, to locate the blame for Breivik’s act of anti-Islamic terrorism in Islam itself. Ladies and gentleman, Raymond Ibrahim (a name quoted as "a widely published Islam-specialist," who "is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center."):

In reality, Breivik’s actions are more inspired by the Jihad than by the Crusades, by the Assassins rather than the Templars, and by al-Qaeda—"which he cherishes great admiration for"—than the IRA. As CNN’s Fareed Zakaria correctly asserts that in Breivik’s view, "the Knights Templar resembles nothing so much as al Qaeda."

The parallels are evident: Medieval Europe, in an effort to retaliate against an expansionist Islam, articulated a means influenced by jihad, or "holy war": the Crusades. Today, modern Europeans like Breivik, in an effort to retaliate against an expansionist Islam, have articulated a means influenced by al-Qaeda: jihadi-style terrorism.

Some may argue that there are non-Muslim terror groups from which Breivik can draw inspiration. Even so, in a globalized world where Islam has by far the lion’s share of terrorism—where nonstop images of jihadi terror have metastasized in the media, and thus the culture—it is not hard to see from where Breivik got his inspiration.

It’s one thing to argue that Breivik took instruction from Al Qaeda’s brand of spectacular terrorist attacks. His manifesto makes clear that he did. But to extrapolate this into a blanket exoneration of historical violence by non-Muslims, as Ibrahim does here, is just transparent nonsense. Frankly, anyone who seriously argues that the idea of religiously sanctioned warfare originated with Islam really has no business posing as a scholar. Human beings were looking to their holy scriptures to justify various acts of violence long before the Prophet Muhammad was ever born.

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