Islam and Terrorism

Wednesday, December the 21st, 1988, 7.03 pm, Lockerbie, Scotland. 31 000 feet above the Scottish grounds, Pan Am flight 103 was en route from Heathrow, London to New York’s John Fitzgerald Kennedy airport. In it were 259 people who were preparing for the upcoming Christmas holidays. Little did these people know that for them as well as for 11 people on the ground, this would be their final moment. Approximately 38 minutes after take off, a bomb exploded aboard that plane. Sending it crashing down into the Scottish grounds. Killing all 259 on board.

October 23 1983, Beirut. During the Lebanese civil war, two trucks laden with explosives struck buildings in Beirut housing U.S. and French members of the Multinational Force in Lebanon, killing hundreds of soldiers, the majority being U.S. Marines. The blasts led to the withdrawal of the international peacekeeping force from Lebanon, where they had been stationed since the Israeli 1982 invasion of Lebanon. Intensifying the Lebanese Civil War.

Ladies and gentlemen, the events which I have just described to you are two examples of infamous terrorist attacks which have happened over the past two decades. This issue of international terrorism still is as troubling now as it has been since a few decades ago. Governments all over the world are issuing orders and directives as to how to solve this problem. Wars both big scale as well as small scale have been initiated to combat this problem. Above all tens of thousands of innocent civilian lives have been lost in this constant squabble between terrorists and government. But the question still remains. Who or what is to blamed for this dramatic rise in terrorism?

World over, Islam has constantly come under attack for promoting terrorism. Proponents argue that oppressive and aggressive teachings of Islam allows for terrorism to prosper. They escalate this argument by claiming that every major terrorist attack in the past two decades has been carried out or at least planned by a Muslim. Therefore claiming that the religion of Islam is responsible for terrorism.

Good morning ladies and gentlemen, I stand here before you on this morning not to agree with these bizarre claims but to refute them. After conducting research on the links between Islam and terrorism, I stand here before you, based on my conclusions, to persuade you that Islam is not responsible for the rise of terrorism. In my speech, what you can expect to hear is what Islam really stands for and the real causes of terrorism.

In the modern world, Islam is constantly branded as a religion which perpetuates terrorism, aggressive behavior, oppression against women and many more baseless accusations. Islam is in fact a peace loving religion. The word Islam means Salam, which in turn means greetings. The greeting Assalamualaikum which is used by Muslims all over the world means may peace be with you. Apart from that, Islam is a religion which strongly condemns violence of any type. According to the Quran, those who commit acts of violence will never be allowed into heaven. Of course you might ask that if indeed Islam is a religion which promotes peace, why then does it promote Jihad? As a matter of fact Jihad does indeed mean holy war. But there are two types of Jihad. The big jihad and the small jihad. The big jihad explains that one should launch a holy war to combat one’s bad habits such as laziness, bad tempers and addiction to unhealthy activities. The small jihad explains that one should only go to war to defend themselves if they come under attack.

Therefore, now you might ask, if Islam isn’t to be blamed, who or what is to be blamed for all these suicide attacks? Based on the research which I have done, the answer lies not within the deep confines of Islam but within other reasons. The first main reason is the misinterpretation of the religion by radical Islamists and Imams. Over the past three to four decades, the meteoric rise of radical Islamists has indeed proved detrimental to the goodwill of the religion. The reason I say so is because each and every one of these Islamists would come up with their own twisted views and interpretations of the verses from the Quran. According to them Islam is all about violence and every Muslim has a divine responsibility to brandish a weapon to kill all infidels, non believers. They further escalate this argument by saying that the act of killing an infidel would give them more points to go into heaven. And when they do, they would be handsomely rewarded by Allah. According to them, these rewards include 70 virgins for a single man, a free flow of wine and all the luxuries that every man or women would desire. Therefore ladies and gentlemen, from these elaborations we can indeed come to a sound conclusion that it is not Islam which promotes terrorism, but the radical Islamists who actually misuse the banner of Islam for their own sick and twisted purposes. My question to you is, does all of this make sense? If indeed such rewards exist in heaven, why don’t the Islamists who preach them go ahead and sacrifice themselves instead? Furthermore, if your objective is to have everyone accept your religion as a peace loving religion, why launch violent attacks? Won’t these only serve to undermine the credibility of your religion? Think about it.

Apart from the rise of radical Islamists, there is a more sinister reason to the existence to this problem. Imagine this. You live in a rather run down or deplorable town, city or maybe even a country. You are the eldest child in a family of 10. Life has been anything but pleasant. Your father barely makes enough money to put a meal on the table. Your mother on the other hand, has been restricted by certain laws and traditions to go out and look for work. The rest of your siblings are too young to even look for work. Often, your family gets through the day with barely a meal. None of them even receive a proper education. Being the eldest, you may somehow feel a sense of responsibility to cure this problem. But the problem is, in a town where everybody lives in extreme poverty, you just don’t know where to look. Then one fine day, a certain stranger visits your village offering you as well as the other village boys a chance to redeem your family and to live a good life. This stranger persuades you to leave your family and join the terrorist army where you would be handsomely rewarded. With no other choice, you lie to your family, saying that you are going to a foreign land to look for jobs, but in fact you are going to fight and eventually die fighting for a cause which only makes sense to the radical Islamists. This ladies and gentlemen often happen in countries like Iran, Iraq, Syria, Chechnya, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia and Pakistan. That’s exactly why terrorism is often blamed on Islam. Their argument is that the majority of the terrorists are young Muslim men. Is this logical?

And as a consequent to this, the religion of Islam is often promoted to be somewhat like the bad people. Hollywood often makes movies which portray the Muslims to be the evil people. Newspaper headline often undermine Islamic practices such as modesty and traditionalistic views to be out of sync with the modern world. Lately, Islam has often become the unwilling scapegoat to the problem of terrorism. Compelling arguments have been made by world leaders all around the world for this. But the problem is, those reasoning often fail to pin point the root causes of terrorism.

So after listening to all of this, I ask you, is it fair to blame Islam for promoting terrorism? In fact we can often counter argue by saying that most of the prolific terror acts have been carried out by non Muslims. For example the IRA or the Irish Republican army which has committed hundreds of terror activities on Irish soil, Timothy McVeigh who was responsible for the Oklahoma City bombings. The deadly Mumbai bombings were done by Hindu fanatics. John Wilkes Booth, the actor who assassinated Abraham Lincoln, Jack the Ripper and the Ku Klux Klan were all Christians. So if we keep blaming Islam for terrorism, wouldn’t it only be fair to blame non Muslims, Hindus, Christians and Jews for being terrorists?

Before I end my speech, allow me to summarize what my main points were. My first point was the elaboration of Islam. My second and third points were the causes of terrorism which is the rise of Islamic radicals as well as the deplorable conditions from which most of these insurgents come from