Salman Rushdie was targeted for assassination because of his 1988 novel, The Satanic Verses, which many Muslims felt insulted the Prophet. Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa in 1989 to have Rushdie killed. The fatwa has since been rescinded.
Why is Muhammad’s role in the unfolding of early Islamic history often portrayed so negatively in “western cultures”?
It is exceedingly difficult to see through the veil of dark images that has shrouded the picture of Muhammad in the thinking of many non-Muslims over the centuries. When non-Muslims read, for example, of Muhammad’s decision to resort to fight the Jewish tribes of Medina, they are shocked. Unfortunate events like these seem to blind one to anything positive in the early history of Islam, and non-Muslims rarely (if ever) get the Muslim side of the story. At the opposite end of the spectrum, Muhammad remains for Muslims the paragon of gentleness and concern for the needs of people. One always needs to look for the truth somewhere in between the ideal of utter perfection most communities see in their foundational figures and the jaundiced view taken by people who for many reasons prefer to cling to negative assessments of “others.”
Why is mutual understanding so hard to come by when it comes to such matters?
Part of the problem here is that there is sometimes a thin line between justifiable revolution and unlawful, treasonable action. How many colonial American preachers encouraged their congregations to support the “American revolution”? Whether in Northern Ireland or the Middle East, organizations like the IRA (Irish Republican Army) and Hamas have arisen to combat what they perceive as tyranny. Many of their members no doubt think of themselves as devout and sincerely religious. And many Irish-American Catholics and Arab-American Muslims who support these and other such causes financially no doubt regard their choice as highly ethical. But such support necessarily involves a terribly serious form of denial. It requires that one assert that no one on the “other side” is innocent, or at the very least, that it is sometimes acceptable to shed innocent blood to achieve a greater good.
Does the media accurately portray the notion that many Muslims, with support from clerics, are involved in terrorist activities?
Suppose a non-Christian living outside of the United States had heard that most Americans identify their country as a Judeo-Christian nation. Suppose that the only reports about Christians were of sectarian violence emanating from Northern Ireland. Would the conclusion be that Christians prefer violence? If IRA bombings and murders alone did not persuade people of that, suppose there were credible reports that some Irish Catholic priests regularly gave their blessings to such activities. Suppose further that reports from that quarter were reinforced by occasional news of “Christian” bombings and assassinations at abortion clinics in the United States. And suppose that there were accounts of how racist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan or the Aryan Nation regularly cloaked their social views in biblical and other ostensibly religious teaching, and that organizations like them actively recruited with a message of hatred. Would that be enough to form an opinion that Christianity and violence somehow go together? Virtually everywhere, people have appealed to religion to justify actions and policies that most persons of good will would condemn as incompatible with their religious beliefs. Just because people claim to belong to a particular religious tradition does not mean that they fairly represent that tradition. It merely means that unscrupulous people can sometimes twist and manipulate religion for evil purposes.
How many different kinds of activist or extremist (i.e., violence-promoting) “jihadis” are there?
It is important to distinguish between two large categories of “jihadist” ideologies. For example, the “nationalist” type pursues strategy, objectives, and tactics limited in scope to a given political setting or nation-state. The Sunni organization based in Gaza and known as Hamas, for example, is focused sharply on the Palestinian cause; the Shi’ite and Iran-backed Hezbollah is centered in Lebanon and aims at what it regards as liberation from and destruction of the state of Israel; and the Taliban, with bases mostly in Pakistan currently, are intent on establishing Afghanistan as a Muslim state.
What about jihadism on a larger scale?
Some groups of “transnational” jihadis, such as al-Qaeda and related organizations, declare war on a more remote foe, typically identified as “the West”—especially the United States, with attention to its allies, Europe and Israel, as well as the non-Islamic governments of their own home countries. Transnational jihadists rally around what they claim are historical and ongoing Western-inspired offenses against, and systematic oppression of, Islam and Muslims. Just as the Iranian revolutionary ideologues have consistently condemned the United States as the Great Satan, transnational jihadis cast their struggle as a cosmic engagement between good and evil so intractable that only the most extreme forms of outward violence will affect any change. Anything short of constant warfare against this global enemy is collaboration and cowardice and refusal to engage in the struggle to reform Islam from the inner corruption that tempts Muslims to prefer comfort to warfare. Some preachers continue to invite martyrs for the cause, promising eternal rewards and support for their surviving families. Arguing that otherwise forbidden suicide is in this case “self-selected martyrdom,” they engage in contorted exegesis of the Quran for the purpose of giving the highest justification to all-out warfare. Though the vast majority of Muslim religious scholars abhor their ideological distortions, the extremists call for the indiscriminate slaughter of whoever happens to be in the path of their cause.
What motivates some highly influential religious scholars to adopt such radical ideologies when the vast majority do not go to such extremes?
Recent social science research suggests that neither, say, poverty nor the views of their own teachers are to blame here, as many might suppose. Much more important are broader sociological factors, especially lack of support in their academic background and educational networks. People trained in religious studies who lack the “connections” needed to secure stable and respectable jobs as local imams or faculty members in major state institutions are most likely to drift toward the fringe. One reason is that established governments typically limit the spread of extremist groups by controlling the ideologies taught in those state-controlled institutions. The research shows that while only 2–3 percent of scholars whose networks helped them get the “good” jobs were ever inclined toward radical ideologies, over 50 percent of those who lacked influential “connections” and could not land state positions became radicalized. These individuals, disaffected and willing to engage in questionable interpretations of the tradition in order to get followers from outside the “system,” are the teachers largely responsible for disseminating violent jihadist rationale.
Why was Ayatollah Khomeini so influential? Did he preach primarily military conflict with “the West”?
Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini (1902–1989) is certainly best known for his strident invectives against the “West,” and especially against the United States. He was an accomplished orator and prolific writer and is widely regarded as the principle architect of the Iranian Revolution. Khomeini made his first public political declaration in the early 1940s, and he remained consistent in his views till his death. As for his views on jihad, Khomeini speaks of the traditional understanding of jihad or “struggle in the way of God” according to both its outward and inward aspects. The Greater Jihad, inner personal purification, is an absolute prerequisite for any outward attempts to establish justice and counter aggression. Without first establishing an interior conviction of this world’s worthlessness in comparison to the ultimate worth of the next world, the Lesser Jihad remains just another way of serving this-worldly concerns. It is worth noting that Iraq, not Iran, was the aggressor in the nearly decade-long Iran-Iraq war, in which Saddam Husayn employed chemical weapons.
The Ayatollah Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini (1902–1989) was the architect
