"Nothing to do with Islam"

It is a sad fact of contemporary life that 'response to atrocity' is becoming one of the major genres of public discourse.  In the aftermath of Paris, I wrote something critiquing some of our standard responses, and it feels like that could be meaningfully trotted out again.  I just wanted to pick up on one particular response, which I've heard a fair bit of in the last couple of days (from, for example, Andy Burnham, who to be fair has done a generally fantastic job and would surely have hoped not to be tested so severely at such an early juncture): "this has nothing to do with Islam".

Why do we react like this?

Firstly, I think we have a deep-seated habit of regarding religion as something like a hobby, and people just don't do this sort of thing for a hobby.  In the West, broadly speaking, religion is not thought to be about reality; we are agreed that reality is the empirical stuff around us, accessible to scientific explanation.  That is the realm of facts.  In the realm of belief, one can hold more or less whatever one likes, so long as one does not make the mistake of thinking that one's beliefs have anything to do with facts.  With this sort of mindset, it becomes simply inconceivable that anyone would kill or die for belief.  We can't imagine it.  I've seen more than one commenter remark that one would have to be mentally ill to be a suicide bomber - so impossible is it for us to imagine that anyone might take the promise of Paradise seriously.

Secondly, there are (to a certain extent good) social and political reasons to want to cut the conceptual link between Islam and terrorism.  It seems pretty clear that one of the aims of the Islamic State is to stir up strife between Muslim and non-Muslim communities in Western nations.  The presumably hoped for result is that Muslims in the West will end up feeling (more) isolated and alienated, and will find the position of IS more plausible as a result - "they said we couldn't live together in peace, and look, they were right".  We know that there are non-Muslims in our society who already regard Muslims with suspicion, and would not take much persuasion to believe that every Muslim was a potential fifth columnist in some global apocalyptic war.  We would prefer to avoid that.

Thirdly, most of us are aware that the overwhelming majority of Muslims don't want this, don't want to be associated with it, and don't recognise it as a part of their religion.  We want to embrace that perspective, of course, and so we universalise it.

Fourthly, in certain quarters there is a belief, connected to my first point, that a deeper explanation must be found for terrorism, and that the reason is Western oppression.  That is a plausible perspective, because goodness knows there is plenty of guilt in history.  It is made even more plausible when read through a broadly Marxist lens, which denigrates ideas as mere ephemera, masks for social and economic reality.

Can I suggest a couple of reasons why this response won't do?

Firstly, it is the worst kind of patronising.  There is no need for us to take what terrorists say about their motivation entirely at face value - such would be highly naive - but I also cannot see the justification for so completely ignoring the reasons which they themselves give for their actions.  They think they are serving God, they really do.  Unless we take this seriously, we are claiming to know them and their motives better than they know themselves, which is quite a claim.  We are claiming that although they appear to think differently from us and value different things, in fact they must be the same as us underneath - they must really, at some level, know (just as we do) that religion is not about reality.  Or perhaps they don't know, because we are more enlightened than them?  However we frame it, we're making the claim that what terrorists do and say must be parsed through our worldview before we will take it seriously, which is a sort of epistemological imperialism.

Secondly, it's historical nonsense.  I do not really see how anyone can argue that religiously-motivated violence has not been present as a strand in Islamic thought and action from the beginning.  Islamic State could make a claim, I think not entirely incredible, to represent that strand.  Of course, they wouldn't accept that this was only a strand; for them, it's the whole deal, and if you're not on board with it you're not a proper Muslim at all.  In that, they're clearly in error: there is broad tradition of peaceful Islam, which can make at least as credible a claim to stem from the earliest stages of Islam.  But that broad tradition does not mean that there isn't sufficient material in the foundational documents of Islam to justify religiously-motivated violence.  (Can I recommend on this Tom Holland's excellent recent documentary Isis: The Origins of Violence?)  Given the history, I don't see how we in the West can legitimately set ourselves up as the judges of what is and isn't genuine Islam.

Thirdly, and this is the point at which I feel most uncomfortable and least certain, it does seem to me that there are ideological/philosophical/theological reasons to think that Islam and terrorism are linked.  To me, as someone who tries to be informed about Islam but inevitably has a limited understanding and perspective, there seems to be some fit between the radical monotheism and the call to unconditional submission in Islam and religious violence.  Again, I'm not saying that Islam necessarily leads in this direction; just that, to me, it makes sense that it might.  I'd like to do some more reading on this, and if anyone could recommend anything I'd appreciate it, because I think this is really important.  You see, religious violence comes from lots of places.  There is no denying that Christians have endorsed religiously-motivated violence in the past, and in many places in the world still do; but I think there is sufficient material in Christianity's founding documents and in the broad theological tradition to critique this pretty thoroughly.  I'm not sure there is in Islam.

None of this is to say that there is not a complex web of issues leading to terrorist attacks.  The failure to plan for the aftermath of the Iraq war, the failure to act on Syria - these foreign policy failures have surely made the Islamic State's reading of Islam more plausible, for example.  And of course the individuals involved will be motivated by many different things.  But to claim that religiously-motivated violence has nothing to do with religion is a foolish thing to do, which will inevitably misdirect our practical responses to terrorism.

Mocking God

God is not mocked - Galatians 6:7

...twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on his head and put a reed in his right hand. And kneeling before him, they mocked him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” - Matthew 27:29

A god who needs protecting is no god at all.  In particular, a god who needs human beings to take offence on his behalf and to violently protect his reputation and honour is no god.  If he is a god, let him contend for himself.  Let's be straight: a god who is this brittle, this fragile, this needy - he is nothing.  An idol.  Emptiness.

What difference does it make that God - the God we see in Christ - willingly submitted to mockery and scorn?  Surely at least this: every Christian crusade, every Christian blasphemy law, every time a Christian says 'well they wouldn't get away with mocking Islam in this way' - this is always a misunderstanding and diminishing of God.  It does not serve his glory for us to try to fight for him; rather in so far as we are able we conceal his glory.  His glory is revealed at the cross.

Christians serve a God who is big enough, strong enough, secure enough, that without his own glory being threatened in any way he could endure mockery and abuse from creatures he had made.  Indeed, we serve a God who could take that very mockery and abuse and turn it into the most stunning revelation of his own glorious love: the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.  He does not need us to take offence on his behalf.  He does not need, or ask for, our defence.

Let us not transform him into an idol, imprisoned by his own fragile glory.

What words mean 1: 'Extremism'

'Extremism' is all over the news at the moment, mainly in relation to the activities of the so-called 'Islamic State'.  Sometimes 'extremist' is used with qualifiers - 'Islamist extremists', 'Sunni extremists', 'religious extremists' - but often just by itself 'extremist groups'.

But what does 'extremist' even mean?  It conjures up an Aristotelian view of life in which the mean is the ultimately desirable thing.  For Aristotle (or at least the Aristotle of parts of the Nicomachean Ethics), extremes are in general to be avoided.  For example, on a spectrum of abject cowardice through foolhardy bravery, both extremes are to be avoided; the mean is a cautious bravery.  Is this the sort of thing that people mean when they talk about extremists?  Apparently not.  I don't think that when the BBC writes about Islamist extremists that they mean that one ought to strive for moderate Islamism, or that a Sunni extremist is someone who thinks and acts like a Sunni Muslim more than they ought to.

Can I suggest that what is actually meant by 'extremist' is usually something more like 'someone who doesn't take the blasé, indifferentist approach to questions of reality and life which is preferred within our liberal democracies'.  The average Westerner in the 21st century thinks that ultimate reality is pointless, and therefore holding serious beliefs about ultimate reality is pointless.  Arguing about metaphysics makes no sense.  Believing, on the basis of one's convictions about ultimate reality, that there is a right and a wrong way to live and to order society is just daft - and probably offensive.  Everyone ought to confirm to the bland, beige reality of secular life, and if they do entertain speculations about the true nature of the world and human life, keep it to themselves.

An extremist, then, is just anyone who thinks that things really matter, that there is a higher reality than the economy and a few beers at the weekend.  Western society, as a whole, finds such people intolerable.  People who try to live in a way which is logically and practically consistent with a particular view of ultimate reality are dangerous.

I am very much okay with extremism.  I think a society which cannot contain extremists is already broken.  The problem I have with IS is not that they are extremists (in the sense outlined above), but that the beliefs which they hold and try to live out are wrong, and therefore wicked.

My contention would be that the language of extremism is used to avoid having to ask questions like: 'are their beliefs about ultimate reality true or false?'  This is a question which must be avoided, because it leads to other questions like 'do Islamic beliefs (or some variant or subset of these) about ultimate reality lead, when taken seriously, to IS and its like?'  I don't propose to answer that; only to show that the point of talking about extremism is to put people a priori beyond the pale, so that we don't have to consider their actual beliefs, something that our mushed together Western non-culture will always struggle to do.

A little bit less racist

A while back - say, 12 years ago - I would have been largely unmoved by the current atrocities being perpetrated by Israel in Gaza.   I like to think that even then I would have felt some basic human sympathy for people who have lost loved ones, and some sense of the injustice involved in the deaths of innocent children.  But it wouldn't have been the gut-wrenching, horrible feeling that I have today.  It wouldn't have left me wondering how we can all go on.  And it wouldn't have led me to desire, and in so far as it lies with me demand, the end to the system that stands behind this cycle of violence.  I would have been bothered, but not that bothered.

And this is why.

I was on the side of law and order.  It is funny how easily this works - it's a matter of language and perceptions.  Israel has an army - nay, a 'Defence Force' - whilst the Palestinians have 'militants'.  Israel has uniforms and organisation and rules, whilst the Palestinians have, well, Hamas.  My perception was that one side in this conflict upheld order and the rule of law, whilst the other represented chaos.  (I wouldn't have put it quite like that at the time, but there it is).

I was swayed by Biblical reminiscence.  I had been taught the Old Testament far too well to fall for the theological train-wreck that is 'Christian' Zionism, but I think looking back I was influenced by the fact that Israel was - well, it was Israel.  Although I knew that this was hardly the Israel of Scripture, still the name has resonance - and with it all the place names, all the bits of Bible that float in the back of your mind and seem to connect with something you're hearing on the news...

I was afraid of Islam.  I 'knew', back then, that Islam was the enemy.  I didn't know, because I hadn't bothered to find out, that there was a substantial Christian community in Palestine.  I also didn't know, as far as I can recall, a single Muslim personally, or at least not closely.  There was just a sense of background fear.  Christians spread this fear easily, and I had picked it up without doing any analytical thinking about it.

And fundamentally, I liked people who were like me.  This is what it comes down to.  Israeli society looked familiar.  I found Palestinian culture, in the almost-nothing exposure which I had through the TV, to be not to my taste.  In other words, I was a racist.

I hope that since then I have become a little bit less racist.  I know that in this particular case, I have come to see that it is my job to speak for those who are oppressed.  I try to do it, in my limited way.  It is my job to be heart-broken for every human being who suffers.  It is my job to see in each group of people those for whom Christ died, and therefore those who are of infinite worth.  It is my job to stand against those who would use power to keep others down, and then would use fear to legitimise their actions.

In this instance, it is my job to be against Israel, not as a group of people but as a state and an organisation which thinks that its own security is worth bombing children for.  Not because I've become all left wing (really, really haven't), or because of a general anti-colonial stance (it's all nonsense), or because I think Islam is okay after all (it isn't).  Just because of humanity, and fundamentally because of Jesus.

Thanks to all those who helped me along the way.  Sorry for who I was.  God help me be better.

And God have mercy on all those who suffer today.