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 of the Iranian Revolution of 1979.
Are the twenty-first-century uprisings in predominantly Muslim lands across North Africa, through the Central Middle East, and into West and South Asia (Afghanistan and Pakistan) directly and uniquely a result of the religious tradition of Islam?
In many instances what outsiders see Muslims doing in other parts of the world is not very different from what outsiders would do in an instant if they were in Muslims’ shoes. A primary difference, though, is that outsiders regard their own motives as political or economic while assuming that Muslims (outsiders seem unshakably convinced) are motivated by religion. The Afghan rebels have called their struggle against Russian military occupation a jihad, identifying themselves as mujahidin. Indeed the law of jihad does allow for military response to an invasion of one’s territorial sovereignty. Numerous groups of Muslims who use the word “jihad” in their names genuinely believe their actions are justifiable and done precisely in defense, for they consider foreign presence in their part of the world invasive and unwelcome. What is most important to note here is this: on balance, Islamic tradition simply does not encourage, let alone recommend unreservedly, violent solutions to human problems.
Most Americans seem to be convinced that Muslim armies spread Islam largely by executing non-Muslims who refused to convert—is this accurate?
Quite the contrary. Early Muslim armies had established various forms of Islamic government from Spain to what is now Northern India by about one hundred years after Muhammad’s death in 632. Over the next thousand years and more, when power changed hands across those lands and wherever Muslim regimes had been established subsequently, the new authorities battled against Muslim rulers and supporters of their regimes. Transfers of power from one dynasty have rarely (if ever) been orderly and peaceful, and it was mostly Muslims who suffered the consequences. Even accounting for a percentage of non-Muslims dying in Muslim invasions and subsequent periods of overt persecutions, the scores of times over twelve hundered years that Muslim dynasties and regimes supplanted other Muslim political entities would likely have accounted for significantly larger numbers of Muslim casualties than non-Muslim.
Did the Muslims pretty much invent “suicide bombing”?
This is not accurate. Here is some perspective on the unpleasant reality of suicide bombing: A careful study investigated the first forty-one such incidents taking place in the contemporary Middle East. The bombings occurred in Lebanon between 1982 and 1986. Researchers positively identified thirty-eight of the perpetrators and followed up with inquiries into their backgrounds, express motivations, and religious or ideological affiliations. Twenty-eight were avowedly secularist, communist, or members of leftist Arab organizations. Three were Christian, including a young woman who was a primary school teacher. Only seven of the thirty-eight were known to have espoused a distinctly Islamic religious ideology. It is also important that the first suicide bombings in recent times occurred not in the Middle East, but in Sri Lanka, and were perpetrated by members of the revolution Tamil Tigers, who were almost entirely of Hindu religious background.
A widespread belief is that in recent conflicts, non-Muslims have been the principal target of jihadi Muslims? Is this based on factual information?
In more recent times, Muslim extremists have killed far more Muslims than non-Muslims and continue to do so. Whether in the nearly ten-year Iran-Iraq war, in which an estimated half million or more died in hostilities, or through multiple counterinsurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan, or the Sudan’s attempted genocide of the Muslim (but ethnically “non-Arab”) inhabitants of Darfur, or jihadi attempts to establish