One
of the main dangers facing the international community in the modern age is the
threat of Islamic extremism and the willingness of its believers to sacrifice
their lives to strike at the “infidels” embodied by Western and secular
societies. Islamophobia has become more
prevalent in the past decade, particularly in America due to the events on
September 11, 2001. This completely
irrational has struck everywhere in American society, from the heights of
government, where former Attorney General John Ashcroft stated that Islam is a
religion in which “God requires you to send your son to die for him,” to the
everyday people, as highlighted by a 2006 Gallup poll which found that 39% of
Americans felt Muslims should be required by the government to carry special
identification which marked them as Muslims.
If that does not sound familiar, I suggest you look up the early stages
of the Holocaust.
Prevalent in many of the
Islamophobic remarks by individuals are statements along the lines of Ashcroft’s,
decrying the barbarity of Islam and extolling the holiness of
Christianity. But to claim such a
contrast between the two religions either shows a lack of knowledge concerning
the history of Christianity or an effort to whitewash the past into one of completely
benevolent Christian actions. A quick
glance through time shows what appears to be a trend concerning the age of Abrahamic
religions and their tendency towards extremist beliefs.
The first religion which occurred in
the lineage of Abraham the patriarch is of course Judaism, as Abraham is
credited as the founder of the religion.
Judaism is one of the oldest religions which survives to this day and is
the oldest such religion which believes in only on God. Interestingly enough, despite its chronology
being much longer than Christianity and Islam, Judaism does not have much of an
“extremist” phase in its history. While
I am by no means a Judaism scholar, from the histories of the Abrahamic
religions I have studied, the closest it appears Judaism came to such a period
occurred from about 110 BCE to 135 CE.
During this time period, the Jewish peoples rose in revolt against their
oppressors several times, first under the Maccabees against the Greek dynasty
which ruled over Israel. While this
revolt was a success, the independence of Israel was short-lived, as Rome soon
subjugated the Jewish people once more.
While many revolts occurred under the Romans, none were successful in
liberating Israel; instead, the Romans forced the Jewish nation out of their
ancestral homeland in what is now known as the Jewish diaspora.
I believe that the reason Judaism
did not see a period of such clear cut extremism as I will show Christianity
and Islam to have experienced is simple.
Unlike its younger siblings, Judaism has never been a “conquering”
religion; in other words, the Jewish religion does not carry the conversion of
non-believers as a central tenant the way Christianity and Islam do. Because of this, for much of its early
history Israel did not interact with foreign entities, as it more or less
simply wanted to be left alone.
Christianity and Islam, on the other hand, both have their
self-propagation as one of the main pillars for their believers to seek to
carry out. Another reason is that since
that last failed revolt in 135 CE, the Jewish people have been scattered and
oppressed around the world, wherever they were found. For nearly two millennia of its history,
Judaism has been found only in small clusters which lacked any semblance of
political agency, thoroughly diminishing the ability of the religion to carry
out extremist acts.
Christianity is another story,
however. The religion grew out of a
Jewish sect led by a teacher from northern Israel named Jesus. While many of the initial members were former
Jews, the religion saw much of its growth in the form of converted “gentiles,”
simply the term used in most Christian texts for non-Jews. While the religion grew fairly quickly in the
early parts of the second and third centuries, its followers faced harsh treatment
by the Roman emperors, leaving a great deal martyred due to their beliefs. However the religion could withstand the
killings of its members due to a reason mentioned earlier: the conversion of
new believers. When Emperor Constantine began
to promote Christianity, going so far as to order the pillaging of all Roman
temples to the mythological deities we know today, its position as a world
power was secure.
Established as a presence that would
not soon disappear, Christianity ruled over Europe as the religion of the Roman
Empire, splitting with the schism between Constantinople and Rome but remaining
the dominant religion over the continent.
While the treatment of non-Christians by the Catholic Church was not
ideal during this period, it would reach a height at the end of the fifteenth
century. After one of Europe’s first
encounters with Islam, via the Umayyad Caliphate’s invasion of the Iberian
Peninsula (an invasion stopped at the Battle of Tours in France by forces under
Charles Martel, the grandfather of Charlemagne), attitudes towards other
religions soured extremely.
The Catholic Church launched several
inquisitions in an attempt to purge all non-Christians from the continent. The most infamous of these, the Spanish
Inquisition, resulted in the execution of thousands of Jews and Muslims along with
untold numbers of torture victims unlucky enough to not die at the hands of
their torturers and people who lost their property and livelihoods. These inquisitions are the most vibrant form
of extremism that the world likely has ever seen. While the modern day extremism of Islam may
claim a higher death and casualty toll, the numbers would likely tilt in favor
of the inquisitions should population inflation be taken into account. Additionally, these were acts directly
sanctioned by the central leadership of the Church itself as well as by the
states themselves who carried out the tortures and murders.
While the historiography of Islam is
complicated by the fact that some Muslims believe that Muhammad simply restored
the originally intended religion of Adam, Abraham, Moses, Jesus and many other
prophets, for our purposes here we will state that the Islamic religion first
appeared with Muhammad in the late sixth, early seventh century. It spread through the Arab world through
conquest and conversion, assisted by the withdrawal of the Eastern Roman Empire
from Asia Minor. In contrast to what
many evangelical Christians would like to believe, the Islamic kingdoms which
arose from the eighth century, after the death of Muhammad, treated Christians
and Jews rather well. Given the Islamic
term “dhimmi,” also known as “people of the book,” Christians and Jews were
granted citizenship in many of these Islamic kingdoms in exchange for the
payment of taxes, as opposed to followers of other religions, who largely were
unable to earn citizenship rights.
Relations between Islamic kingdoms,
and later nations, and the Christian-dominated European nations were fairly cordial
from the Renaissance on, as Muslim merchants played a large role in the Silk
Route, the only trade route between Europe and the eastern reaches of
Asia. While Europe’s eagerness to free
themselves from reliance on Muslim shippers led to Portugal’s funding of
exploratory voyages around what now is the Cape of Good Hope, there was little
violence between the two regions at the time.
Indeed in the period of colonialism from 1500 to 1700, the Islamic
kingdoms, largely centralized under the Ottoman Empire by that time, were shown
respect by European powers in the form of not claiming their land. While the British, French, Dutch, Spanish,
and Portuguese had no qualms about subjugating native peoples for their own
purposes in the Americas and Oceania, for the most part Islamic areas, with the
exception of a substantial Muslim population in India, were left alone.
I believe, however, that the initial
roots of Islamic extremism can be found in the aftermath of World War One. It was after this conflict that the Ottoman
Empire, which held dominion over nearly the entirety of the current day
Middle-East, collapsed and was partitioned by the victorious European powers of
Britain and France. For the first time
in their millennia and a half existence, many Muslims found themselves under
the rule of Christians. Further
complicating issues was the reestablishment of Israel as a homeland for Jewish
peoples, depriving many Palestinians who had been living on the land of their
homes, as well as the discovery of oil.
This oil would become the lifeblood of the Western world and, while
found in many global regions, was virtually untapped and was found under vast,
expansive swathes of land. Western
nations, particularly the United States, lusted after these huge oil reserves
and began to seek to wield their influence in the region to a degree never
experienced before.
As Western-backed dictators came to power in
Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, as well as America’s
continued and relentless support for Israel, popular resentment of the West
grew amongst the citizens of the Middle-East, regardless of religion. It was during this period of high anxiety
that many proponents of extreme Islam came onto the scene. The Iranian Revolution, which saw a United
States backed Shah get overthrown and the Ayatollahs come into power, was a key
moment, as well as the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. People from all over the Middle-East smuggled
themselves into Afghanistan to prevent the Soviet Union from taking the nation
over, including a man from a wealthy and influential Saudi family named Osama
Bin Laden. The United States provided
these fighters with the arms they needed to repel the invasion, and while many
of these arms would be used against American soldiers a few decades later, the
mujahedeen obtained something far more valuable during the struggle. Contacts were made and reputations were
established which would lay the seeds for what is now a global network of
Islamic-extremist terrorism.
The
claim that the Muslim religion is one dominated by hate or fueled by violence
is simply incorrect. Outside factors and
the maturity of the religion play a substantial role in the emergence of
extremism in any form. One interesting
note it this: Christianity was
essentially founded as a true religion in roughly the year 100 CE. The inquisitions which form the touchstone of
Christian extremism began somewhere between 1300 and 1400 CE. That’s about a 1200-1300 year maturation
process before the arrival of extremism.
If one assigns the very reasonable date of 600 CE as the foundation date
of Islam and treats the twentieth century as the emergence of Islamic
extremism, one gets a similar 1300 year maturation
process to extremism for Islam as one does for Christianity.
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