Secular Roots of Religious Terrorism—and What America Can Learn
BY MARC GOPIN
There has been so much talk in recent years about radical religion, but so little talk of its roots often in state-based political calculus. From Iran’s strategic interests in affecting the Middle East through terrorist clients like Hezbollah in Lebanon, to Pakistan’s years of support for the Taliban and violent extremists in Kashmir, to Saudi aspirations of eclipsing Egypt in terms of domination of the Arab world by way of the Muslim Brotherhood’s tyranny over traditional Islam in Egypt, the fact is that it is state-based aspirations of power that are often the root of religious extremism. The bombings in Istanbul a number of months ago can be traced to religious extremists who are history’s leftovers. They were bought and paid for years earlier when Turkish officials created their terror movement as a bulwark against Kurdish separatists, and they murdered several thousand Kurds, with tacit support of the Turkish government.
The Turks are not alone in using religious extremism and then having it smack them in the face years later. American government policy makers have yet to face the consequences of who they supported against the Soviets. There has not been enough soul searching in policy making circles about having supported Osama bin Laden and the Taliban years ago as attack dogs against the Soviets. What did we expect bin Laden and his thugs to learn from the Soviet experience, that it was impossible to defeat a superpower? They did defeat one, but the price paid by Afghanis has been immense, unleashing a movement that killed and brutalized thousands of people at will, especially women, and that now threatens the world with religious terrorism. Not to mention the fact that empowering such people ripped Islam away from moderates the world over.
This overarching political mistake is traceable to two things: (1) the perennial shortsightedness of military alliances and empowerment of dangerous human weapons and (2) a cynical approach to religion that sees it only as a weapon and never as an asset in building a better world.
This is fixable with just three lessons for the future:
- Never use religious extremists militarily for anything, even if they are the enemies of your enemies.
- If you have done so anyway, then correct your mistake by cautious inclusion of select religious moderates in both positive efforts at nation building and the encouragement of democracy and human rights.
- Build a strategic alliance with religious democrats globally, even when they oppose some of your policies.
It is a mistake to suppress good religion in Turkey, or anywhere else, while simultaneously utilizing religion’s worst agents, when most human beings are attracted in some way to the meaning systems provided by religion. You are inadvertently guaranteeing an enemy system that is unnecessary. How do you create a man, like the Turkish bomber, who grows a beard, trades in his clothing to become a more modest man, asks others around him to pray more and live a life of piety, and then proceeds to murder children and throw his life away? He is created by dishonoring and excluding from your civilization those who grow beards as part of a life-nurturing, nonviolent ethic of religious practice.
Religion is one of the most powerful motivators in human life, and it therefore has tremendous dual-use power. It can destroy whole civilizations or give birth to great movements of democracy, social justice, poverty relief, and cultivation of communal relations. Repress it or make fun of it at the same time that you use its extremists to circumvent basic rules of war, and you will create a generation of children who, when searching for meaning, will be attracted to the very extremists who will undermine your civilization. On the other hand, if you honor religion, cultivate its moderate voice, and privilege its proponents of democracy and justice, then you will make children searching for meaning into allies of your civilization. The most important lesson is that there must be a positive role for religion in the great modern experiment with democracy and the civil society building activity of modern states, and that moderate religion needs to be at least as well funded globally as religious extremism has been in order to have a fighting chance to gain the upper hand.
Marc Gopin (mgopin@gmu.edu) is the James H. Laue Professor of World Religions, Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution at George Mason University, where he directs the new Center for World Religions, Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution (http://crdcgmu.wordpress.com/).
