Islam is not even a particularly murderous religion, although that's not saying a great deal, as religions in general can be pretty murderous. God told the Jews to practice genocide: "Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys." Christians, from the Crusades to the conquest of the Americas, have committed mass murder on a much grander scale. (If you think that's not true, ask the native population of the Caribbean. Which doesn't exist any more.) Muslims, as they conquered the Middle East, North Africa, and India, also used brutal violence to gain their ends.
However, once those conquests were achieved, non-believers were mostly left alone by Muslim conquerors. From the Mughal Empire to the Ottomans, Islamic nations usually allowed non-Muslims to live in relative peace in the lands they ruled. There was prejudice and over-taxation (non Muslims usually paid higher taxes) but not a policy of mass extermination. (And yes, if you look through the history of Islam you can find many acts of murderousness and barbarism; just as you can if you look at the history of any major religion.)
In recent decades, friction between the Islamic world and the West has increased and violent terrorism has been on the rise.
Why? I don't think there is one nice simple answer. In general, there has been increasing resentment of the West in response to a few things:
1 - The desire of Western nations, particularly the United States, to support or impose pro-Western governments in this critical region. The United States wants reliable Middle Eastern friends who will guarantee a steady supply of oil for the its economy and that of its allies. We back dictatorships or monarchies in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait (and elsewhere). In 1953, we engineered a coup in Iran that put a pro-American monarchy in charge for twenty-five years. This is why Iran still calls us "the Great Satan." Nobody likes outsiders telling them what to do, and that's what the West has done in the Middle East since the end of World War One. Western neocolonialism feeds anger and resentment among the Muslim population of the Middle East.
2 - Most of the Islamic governments in the Middle East are corrupt dictatorships. The people have no say over their own political lives, and they resent it. This resentment builds and looks for an outlet, which is often violence.
3 - The creation of Israel and the West's support of Israel, particularly the support of the United States. However you feel about the rightness of Israel's creation, the violence leading up to its war of independence demonstrated the growing animosity between Jews and Arabs in that area. The mass migration of Arabs from Jewish occupied lands created a series of permanent refugee camps that fed resentment both from the Arabs living there and Arabs in other states who felt sympathy with their ethnic cousins. The continued occupation of the West Bank and the continued construction of Jewish settlements has further fed this resentment.
4 - The Middle East is young. The average age in the region is under 30. Egypt's median age is 24, compared to 36 in the United States or 39 in France. Young people filled with anger are a volatile force. Just think of the young Americans who, in the midst of the Vietnam War, joined the bomb building Weather Underground terrorists.
5 - Pakistan, India, and Kashmir are a huge problem. There are many books written about the mess that is Pakistan, but a very short version of the story emphasizes two points.
First, in 1947, India and Pakistan were born, separated by an immediately disputed border. The line between the two countries was disputed because Muslims and Hindus were not neatly divided, but lived on both sides of the border. Kashmir, a small province in the north, was a key problem. India was given control by the British, Pakistan claimed it should have been theirs because most of the population was Muslim. The two countries fought three or four wars (depending on how you count) over the province, which remains mostly under Indian control. Unable to win on the battlefield, Pakistan has turned to terrorism as a policy tool. For many decades Pakistan has funded extremist groups and used them to send terrorists south into Kashmir and India. This is our ally, to whom we have given billions in aid.
Second, from 1977 to 1988, Pakistan was ruled by General Zia-ul-Haq, who worked hard to make obedience to Islam a more central part of what had been a fairly secular country.
The combination of the India conflict and Zia's policies have made Islamic extremism much more powerful in Pakistan than it had been previously. This is one of the reasons why the Taliban has such a strong base in western Pakistan.
6 - Saudi Arabia is a major problem. Since the 1700s, the Saudi royal family has supported a very conservative brand of Islam known as Wahhabism. They did this in order to bolster their power and make themselves seem like protectors of holy Islam (rather than the corrupt playboys that they actually are.) In recent decades, they have stepped up this support, spending money to establish Wahhabi style schools through the Muslim world. It's as if the United States government had spent decades funding the most conservative kinds of Christianity, both in and out of the country.
Please don't think I'm suggesting that any of these things justify violence. I'm simply pointing to the beginnings of the complexity from which stems much of the current Islamic violence.
But this does not mean that all Muslims are extremists, that all Muslims are Wahhabis, or that all Muslims hate the West. In fact, most Muslims, like most people, have other priorities than thinking about how much they hate the West. They want to earn a living, raise healthy happy children, be happy in their communities, cheer for their favorite soccer team, you know, just be people. In the film Wadjda (2012) a little Saudi girl spends the movie trying to win a bicycle. She lives in a restricted conservative society, but this does nothing to deny her basic humanity. It bears reemphasizing: Muslims are human beings who want the same things that other human beings want. If you don't believe this, you can stop reading now, nothing I write will change your mind.
Now, yes, as I've said, there are serious threats posed by Muslim fanatics. In Pakistan, Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Iran, there are people who, motivated by their religious beliefs, want to kill people, sometimes people in the West, more often people in their own or neighboring countries. These threats are real and they deserve our attention. However, they are not all the same threat. Even in the lands of extremists, not all extremists are the same. Many people merge all these threats together (along with many others) and shout "Islamic Extremism is coming to get us! They want to impose sharia (Islamic law) upon us all!" These doomsayers see Islamic extremism as a united force bent on our collective destruction.
It's very similar to the anti-Communist paranoia that characterized the Cold War. Dedicated cold warriors conflated every leftist government and individual and claimed that they were all part of a massive conspiracy to bring down America, baseball, and apple pie (that last one was actually true, but never mind…). This conspiracy thinking blinded us to the fact that many Communist nations, far from being tied together, were deeply suspicious of each other. China and the Soviet Union became bitter enemies after 1960 but the United States didn't reach out to China until 1972. Likewise, many Islamic extremists hate each other bitterly. They have other priorities than converting the West to sharia.
It is also important to note that Islam is not the only force behind violence in Muslim countries. Nationalism is arguably just as powerful an ideology as religion and is a driving force in many of these conflicts. In the West Bank and Gaza, it was Palestinian nationalism the led to the creation of the Palestinian Liberation Organization. Note the group's very secular title: "Palestinian" not "Islamic." In recent years, Hamas (the Islamic Resistance Movement) has led many Palestinian Arabs to embrace an overtly religious approach to achieving statehood, but other Palestinians reject Hamas for this very reason. In Pakistan, it is Pakistani nationalism that created the conflict with India. This nationalism has been linked with Islamic extremism, but nationalism remains a key component of the subcontinental conflict. So while my focus here is Islamic extremism, that should not lead us to ignore the importance of nationalism.
So, what are the main extremist Islamic threats facing the West? (And note I don't simply say "main threats." We face bigger threats than Islamic extremism, from rising inequities in our economies to the rising waters causes by global warming.)
Al Qaeda - Founded by Osama bin Laden in the 1980s to fight against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and then turning on the United States in the 1990s. Al Qaeda sees the United States, and its Western allies, as enemies because they support corrupt un-Islamic dictatorships and the state of Israel. They have established branch offices through the Middle East and are very willing to use terrorism to achieve their ends. They are hostile but they are not a large organization. Their biggest attack was pretty awful and killed 3000 people, but they got very lucky in attacking a complacent country. Other Al Qaeda operations have been much smaller and with far fewer victims.
ISIS - The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. These guys were originally an off-shoot from Al Qaeda in Iraq. They took advantage of the chaos caused by Syria's Arab Spring inspired civil war. In 2013, under the leadership of Abu Al Baghdadi, ISIS broke away from Al Qaeda in Iraq and became a completely independent, and very successful organization. They were able to gain control of a number of towns in Syria and then spill over into Iraq in 2014 to capture the major city of Mosul. They talk of wanting to create a Muslim Caliphate (empire) that will purify Islam in the Middle East. They are extremely violent and the version of Islam they follow is very conservative.
The Taliban, in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Taliban began in Afghanistan a few years after the Soviets left the country in 1989. Led by Sultan Omar, they claimed to follow a very restrictive brand of Islam, even more conservative than Wahhabism. Backed by Pakistan, they took over the country and ruled until the post-9/11 American invasion kicked them out. However, despite 14 years of war, they remain a powerful force in the country. Moreover, they have spread into Pakistan, and there are now parts of that country where Taliban extremists operate with impunity. They are not interested in attacks against the United States but if they were ever to gain control of Pakistan (which seems unlikely, but one never knows), it would be pretty bad for their neighbors and the world.
These groups, particularly ISIS, have had disturbing success in gaining adherents in other parts of the world, even among the Muslim communities living in countries such as France, the United Kingdom, and Germany. The recent attack on Charlie Hebdo was carried out by two French Muslims who claimed allegiance to Al Qaeda. Other individuals, inspired by the image of ISIS fighting for Islam, have journeyed to Syria and Iraq to join the struggle.
However, as scary as some of these people sound, they are not all of Islam, they aren't even a major part of the Middle East. Al Qaeda is a group made up of small cells operating in secret. ISIS is much more powerful. They have carved out a large chunk of territory, controlling about 1/3 of Syria and 1/5 of Iraq. This is impressive and deserving of great concern, but not panic. ISIS's advance has been recently been stalled by a combination of US airstrikes and Iranian support for the Iraqi regime. It is to be hoped that ISIS will be defeated under this pressure.
Which brings up one of the major complexities of Islamic extremism. By most definitions, the Iranians are pretty extremist. They live under a theocracy supervised by an Ayatollah and a religious council. However, Iran (and most of Iraq) is a Shia Muslim state. ISIS (and Al Qaeda) are Sunni. These two branches of Islam do not get along. They're a bit like Catholics and Protestants in their commonality and hostility. (The Pope and Martin Luther both believed in Jesus but that didn't stop the horrors of the Thirty Years War.)
So Iran, with a powerful military and a population of 77 million is not going to stand by and allow Sunni extremists to defeat their Shia allies who run Iraq's government. Moreover, Iran is the primary funder of Hezbollah, an extremist Shia militia that operates out of Lebanon. Hezbollah has been sending troops into Syria to help that country's autocratic government hold off its enemies, including ISIS. These bloody battles are one more reminder that most Muslim killers are killing other Muslims.
So if we're going to see all Muslims as one united threat to the West, how do we explain the deep divide between Sunni extremists and Shia extremists? Why do they spend so much time killing each other instead of us? The reality is that Iran and the United States are actually operating as de facto allies in Iraq. (Which is pretty weird and embarrassing for both sides.)
And what about all the other Muslim states where ISIS has no foothold? Turkey, Egypt, and Indonesia, for example, are all allies of the United States. These alliances are complex and there are people in all these countries, and others, who have expressed sympathy with ISIS and Al Qaeda. However, the fact remains that most Muslims and most Islamic governments have aligned themselves against this kind of violent extremism. The president of Egypt, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, has said of Islamic extremism: "It's inconceivable that the thinking that we hold most sacred should cause the entire Islamic world to be a source of anxiety, danger, killing and destruction for the rest of the world."
Look what happened during the recent Charlie Hebdo attacks in France. A Muslim cop, Ahmed Merabet, died a hero, trying to stop the two terrorists. His brother called the attackers "false Muslims" and praised the dead officer as a real Muslim. In the Jewish supermarket attack, Muslim store clerk, Lassana Bathily, ushered store patrons to a hiding place to keep them safe. "I didn't know or care if they were Jews or Christians or Muslims. We're all in the same boat." The family of the store's attacker condemned his actions. "We condemn these acts. We absolutely do not share these extreme ideas. We hope there will not be any confusion between these odious acts and the Muslim religion."
Many Muslims were hostile to Charlie Hebdo even while condemning the attacks, but this is hardly surprising. The satirical magazine published insulting images of the prophet Muhammad.
We must also remember that the main victims of Islamic extremism and terrorism are other Muslims. The violence in Syria has killed tens of thousands. The war against the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has killed hundreds. The toll in the fight against the Taliban in Pakistan is also in the thousands. Recently, a school in Peshawar was targeted, and 145 people were killed, including 132 children. This is why most Muslims fear extremism.
It's true that after the Charlie Hebdo there were ugly statements in support of the attacks by Muslims around the world. The extremism that feeds these kinds of attacks is far too widespread. But it is not an attitude shared by most Muslims. The majority of Muslims do not support a violent jihad against the West.
We, of course, could do our best to change that. The more we claim that all of Islam is our enemy, the more we encourage people in those countries to see us as an enemy. Conflating all Muslims into one giant evil category is stupid in two ways: it's factually wrong; it is likely to give aid and comfort to our real enemies.
We must remember that terrorism has two primary goals. The first is to gain supporters by demonstrating a group's power and determination. "Look at those guys, they're pretty fierce and cool, I think I want to join them." The second is to goad your opponents into an over-reaction that will gain you even more supporters. "The United States just invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, maybe they are really enemies of Islam!" Think back to a classic terrorist act: The Boston Tea Party. The primary goal of the Boston Tea Party was not to get rid of some tea, it was to get the British to over-react, clamp down on colonial rights, and thereby gain many more colonial supporters for the rebel cause. And it worked.
Let's not hand extremists a gift by lumping all Muslims together into one gigantic mosh pit of enemies bent on our destruction. It would be very very bad for us (and they probably wouldn't even say "thank you.")
