The original Draft was written and published in September 2005
Religion,
Politics and Terrorism
Ali-Asghar
Kazemi*
“It
is not in the temporal interest of a religious communion that all its members
should be reasonable minded. The violent spirits, who
adhere to it solely out of fastidiousness, perform for it, humanly speaking a thousand valuable
services. So it is useful that hotheaded
of this sort
should be found
in its ranks; this
is necessary evil.”
Pierre Bayle [1]
Introduction
Recent
terrorist attacks in Jordan’s
relatively calm capital on November
9, 2005, and the unfortunate killing of a number of innocent
peoples[2],
raise once again the vital question of religious fanaticism in the region. It
appears that this unfortunate phenomenon is the most essential peril of the
overall world order at the beginning of 21st century. It seems that
the threat of terrorism is really getting out of hand and is causing immense
damage to almost everybody throughout the globe.
Almost
four years after September 11th, and despite the fact that most
powerful nations on earth, including the United States of America and other
European states, have mobilized their full military, political, intelligence
and financial capacity to cope with this curse, the situation seems to be much worse
than ever before. Many books papers,
articles, guidelines and directives have been written in order to devise
strategies and course of actions to tackle with this problem, yet there appears
to be no solution for it and no end to it. Are we really condemned to accept
this horrifying carnage and surrender to it? Is this really a necessary evil
of our modern civilization? Does it seek its roots in religious intolerance
of zealous Moslem devout?
This
short paper shall attempt to briefly address those questions in order to shed some
light on this most unusual calamity which is endangering the present social
order and international peace.
Since the League of Nations,
several attempts to arrive at an internationally accepted definition of
terrorism have proved to be fruitless.[3] Despite numerous efforts of international institutions, academics, and
specialists in the field, there still seems to be no consensus on the legal,
political and practical meaning of terrorism. This lack of agreement has
created major obstruction to devising effective measures and strategy to cope
with this horrific phenomenon which in the present century is threatening the
whole fabric of human societies. One reason for this impediment is the
contradicting views and perceptions on the terminology. Cynics who want to
simplify the matter argue that: one state's ‘terrorist’ is another state's ‘freedom
fighter’. Therefore, it appears that we are caught in a terminological
stalemate in defining terrorism right from the start. However, there has been
some endeavor by the United Nations to set some more or less acceptable
standards upon which terrorism could be defined. [4]
Despites
those attempts, the UN Member States still have no consensus and agreed-upon
definition for terrorism. Some have suggested equating acts of terrorism as
“peacetime equivalents of war crimes.”[5]
It is not however quite clear as to whether having a comprehensive single
convention on terrorism at the international level, instead of numerous
piecemeal treaties and protocol, may necessarily solve any problem. Since,
those non-states actors who recourse to such inhuman actions for dubious and
evil causes, would never feel obligated to any such legal instrument which has
the effect of limiting their deeds. Nonetheless, one could make a case that the
lack of an agreement on a definition of terrorism leaves the matter to the will
of any single state to take any arbitrary countermeasures which seem
appropriate and suitable to its interests. Furthermore, critics have often
commented that if terrorism is defined strictly in terms of attacks on civilian
populations and non-military targets, numerous assaults on military
installations, residences, convoys and soldiers' quarters, which have been
prime targets of terrorists in recent years, would be excluded from the lists.
When Terrorism gained Momentum?
Terror and terrorism have existed
throughout the history of human civilization. Despite its long history,
terrorism and low-level violence associated with religious movements are more recent
phenomena. In the past, despotic rulers used terror as a means to subjugate
their own people. The post-revolutionary France has passed through the trauma
of Robespierre’s terror. The memory of systematic state terror in Stalin’s Russia,
Hitler’s Germany
and other dictators is still alive.
Curiously, one of the earliest
groups to use terror by religious heresy and in the name of God was the “Persian
Assassins,” whose trans-national activities plagued the Islamic world from the
end of eleventh century to the beginning of the thirteenth.[6]
The Assassins who belonged to a secret order of Moslem fanatics terrorized and
killed without mercy the Christian crusaders.
The rapid spread of religious fever
and revolutionary appeal in the troubled Middle-East after the Iranian
revolution, created extreme fear for oil-rich traditional Moslem societies such
as Saudi-Arabia and other small states of the Persian Gulf. The fall of the
Shah of Iran enhanced the confidence of other dormant and latent religious
movements in the region. Soon after Iran’s revolution, destabilizing
forces throughout the Middle East gained
momentum under the guise of religion. Saudi-Arabia was one of the first
targets, where fundamentalist groups launched attacks against and occupied the
Grand Mosque in Mecca
at a time when King Khalid was expected to be worshipping there.[7]
Since the first version of this
paper was written almost two decades before September 11th, 2001, [8]
the world has experienced unbelievable rise in terrorist activities. In those
days, terrorism was merely categorized as “low-level violence”, carried by
certain extremist groups and mainly directed toward limited objectives. Their
causes were more or less known and their means were rather limited to hostage
takings, high jacking and other petty actions for the purpose of gaining some
publicity and recognition.
In the past terrorism had merely a
pejorative connotation in world public opinion, and for the authors it was
merely another kind of legitimate struggle involving use of force and violence,
for presumably legitimate causes and objectives. Terrorists were described as
“non-state actors” employing unconventional as well as orthodox techniques of
violence in order to attain certain political objectives.[9]
But
today this dimension of terrorism has changed drastically. We are now
witnessing the tremendous spread of a new face of terror, associated with violent
behavior of religious extremists, whose cruel actions and drive to cause
extensive bloodshed, go beyond sane imagination. This phenomenon is described as
one of the sad paradox of our time; the myth of “romantic revolution” whose
promoters are the ideologues, whose dupes are the young and idealistic and
whose victims are the week and the little men, the children, the old and
defenseless.[10]
With the advent of sophisticated
communications and relations among nations, terrorism, whether directed toward
states or individuals, has gained new dimensions and consequently attracted the
attention of world public opinion. It has also provided appetizing food for
mass media around the world and hence incentive for terrorists to gain
reputation through wide publicity.[11]
Unlike the past when conventional media, such as radio and television broadcast
and newspapers could limit the propaganda impact of terrorism, today the
internet has become a rather uncontrollable, easy and handy tool for murderer
to expose their horrifying acts to the public
around the world. We have seen with revulsion the shocking video clips showing
the act of beheading of innocent people in Iraq.
Terrorism: Means
and Ends
During the past decade or so, not
only the momentum of terror activities but also the means and ends of terrorism
have drastically changed. Today we fear about terrorist attacks by unconventional
means such as: nuclear, biological and chemical agents. Unfortunately,
terrorist organizations and groups, such as Al-Qaeda, have accumulated huge
amounts of financial assets through clandestine or even legitimate activities
or have been provided money and other
means by states at odd with the prevailing norms and status of international
community.
Terrorist organizations use diverse
methods for their actions and violence. From hand-made bomb explosions in
crowded places of business, banks, military installations, communication
centers, to hijacking of airplanes, political abductions, and assassination of
important private or public figures. Terrorists employ every conceivable means
of violence to promote their cause; provided they really have one.
In recent years, especially after
the American military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, terrorists
have gone to the extreme by conducting suicidal attacks against their targets.
Of course, we shall not forget the suicide attacks against embassies and
troop’s headquarters of Western powers around the world before that period;
among which militia actions in Lebanon,
Saudi Arabia,
Yemen,
and Argentina…
are the most notorious. Despite extreme precautionary security measures, these
operations and the likes are still being carried out by the terrorists, for the
purpose of gaining attention of the media, intimidating an opponent or toppling
a shaky and weak government. The present Iraq is an ill-fated example of
such daily occurrence.
Political assassinations, sabotage
and mass murder activities by religious factions in the Middle-East have been
among the most atrocious actions in the recent years. Even Iran, which is
accused to support certain terrorist groups in the Middle East, has experienced
the harshest and the bloodiest terrorist operations conducted by opponent and
antagonistic religious groups during and after the 1979 revolution.[12]
Curiously, it was in the midst of
this religious turmoil in the Middle East that
the opportunist Soviets began to promote their own cause in the region. The
invasion of Afghanistan[13],
along with pro-soviet terrorist activities, made the ground ready for further
religious movements directed toward political ends.
After the collapse of the Soviet
communism, which traditionally supported terrorist activities throughout the
world, religious conviction became the motivating force for those who wanted to
change the rule of the game in international relations with the objective to
alter the prevailing conditions by bringing down the infidel and corrupt rulers
and ousting their foreign supporters.
A
brief chronology of significant terrorist activities in an interval of about 40
years (1961-2003), prepared by the U.S. State Department shows hundreds of such
operations which claimed the lives of thousands of innocent peoples around the
world.[14]
These operations range from high jacking, hostage taking, attacks on military
headquarters, embassy, hotels, restaurants, churches, mosques, assassinations
of political and religious figures, kidnappings, suicide bombings and the
likes. Perhaps September 11th attacks on U.S. cities were the most
significant and unprecedented operations, which indeed thoroughly changed the
security perception of the Americans as well as all other nations around the
Globe. [15]
State Sponsored Terrorism
The lack of a clear definition for terrorism makes it quite problematic to
distinguish between domestic violence and repression against political
dissidents by the government in power or its proxy. To label such actions as
terrorism may depend on whose eyes one considers the matter. Usually, when it
applies to nationals of a particular state, the incumbent power uses
justification for its actions against dissidents by accusing them to complot
for toppling the legitimate government. These operations however are not
considered as state sponsored terrorism as such. But when states plan to
perform through its agents some clandestine terror actions inside or outside
its territory in pursuit of some political objectives, then it can be labeled
as act of terrorism. Some critics have argued against distinction between state
and non-state acts of terror on the ground that it may justify state supported
violence. Nonetheless, in several occasions states have been accused to commit
genocide and crime against humanity for systematic and willful mass murder. [16]
State
sponsored terrorism either to counter domestic dissensions or to intimidate and
humiliate foreign countries, is a dangerous development of the so-called
low-level violence in international relations. There is no doubt that the
support of terrorist activities, in whatever manner, by a state or group of
states will further increase these latter’s capacity for violence, by
encouraging recourses to such operations for the settlement of ethnic,
political or religious differences.[17]Just
recently, Syria
was accused to plot a terrorist act against former Lebanese Prime Minister
Rafiq Hariri, which led to the UN investigations on the event and a UN Security
Council Resolution on the matter, which paved the way for a drastic
geopolitical change in the Middle East.[18]
Apart
from the terrorist attacks on the lives of political and religious leaders of
the world during the past years,[19]
as mentioned earlier, the international system has also experienced the
development of highly sophisticated and unprecedented terrorist activities
against the interests of Western powers throughout the globe. All of these
operations, whether conducted by “liberation fighters” or “terrorists”,
depending whose side we consider the matter, are actions aimed at creating
psychological impact on the opponents.[20]
These latter may be domestic government, foreign occupying or intermediary
unwanted forces, or simply competing factions of the same political or religious
movements.
Terrorism and Freedom Fighters
As
mentioned above, distinction between terrorists and freedom fighters has always
posed difficult questions for devising internationally agreed upon measures to
cope effectively with terrorism. In the past, religious inspired terrorism has
helped certain colonial territories to fight against powerful countries for
their liberation. In such case the freedom fighters or liberation movements
sought justification for their operations via the attainment of a legitimate
cause. For example, the Algerian struggle for independence turned to terrorism,
once the rebel armies were virtually beaten in the field by the French forces.
It was only after recourse to such activities that French military might in Algeria came to
its knees.[21]
The
Moslem Shiite Militia in South Lebanon did the
same with Israel
in their occupied land through harshest terrorist activities.[22]
Afghan Moslem Mujahedeens fought with a Superpower (USSR) through guerrilla
warfare and terrorist operations in occupied Afghanistan. [23]They
caused much trouble to Moscow, as did North Vietnamese to the United States.[24]
Current daily bloodshed in Iraq
and to some extent in Afghanistan
by insurgent groups, seek their logic in such pretexts.
Urban
guerrilla warfare, low-level violence or mob actions directed by religious
groups are dimensions of ideological conflicts and revolutionary theories which
now manifest in form of domestic and international terrorism. Dissidents of
tyrant leaders and dictatorial regimes find their voice heard and their cause
achieved through what we call terrorism for sake of simplicity, but they
consider it legitimate jihad or just struggle against their enemies.[25]
In
all cases, culprits and victims believe that they are acting in the best
interest of their causes and in accordance to their respective moral values. On
the one hand, the cause of the state, social order and the preservation of the status quo; on the
other hand, the causes of salvation, justice, human rights, liberation, and the
changing of the status quo.[26]
The Future of Terrorism
We
are living in a dangerous world no prophet ever predicted. The spread and
magnitude of terror activities have made all nations very vulnerable. What
happened recently in Amman-
Jordan can occur
any time and any where without discrimination. Terrorists have already
demonstrated that they can achieve disproportionately large effects in world
order with a relatively small number and limited capacity for violence.[27]
They have caused widespread alarm, compelling governments with a clear
preponderance of conventional military power to negotiate with them, to grant
them concessions or simply to back down with humiliation.[28]
Unfortunately,
religion, in this particular case Islam, has become a scapegoat for the cowards
and cruel backward fanatics in order to discharge their evil intentions and
capacity. Religiously inspired terrors
are understandably more ferocious and brutal than mere political violence or
mob actions. When for example, martyrdom is considered as a grace and blessing
of God, an obsessive Moslem believer can easily risk his life in a suicidal
attack in order to do damage to his ideological opponents[29].
The resurgence of the Islamic fundamentalist movements in the Middle-East whose
participants preach total devotion and submission to the will of God, and
negation of earthly materialism, is indeed a crucial development of our time
which is capable of destabilizing the international system and world order.
Thus
far all endeavors to effectively deal with this kind of terrorism seem to have
failed. It is not quite clear how the world should approach this evil of the 21st
century. Use of force and naked power has proved to be inefficacious. It would
be rather hard to believe that terrorism may be uprooted for good in the years
to come. Perhaps we should think of some unconventional means to contain this
unusual phenomenon called terrorism.
* * *
[1] Quoted from Pierre Bayle, Dictionnaire
Historique et Critique, by Arnold Toynbee, An Historian’s Approach to Religion, (London: Oxford University Press, 1957,
p.172.
[2]
Among the victims of the suicide bomb attack was
our Palestinian friend and colleague Abed Alloun, who so eagerly hoped for
peace and quiet in the Middle East.
[3]
The
first attempt to arrive at an internationally acceptable definition was made
under the League of Nations, but the
convention drafted in 1937 never came into existence. The League of Nations Convention (1937) provides the following
definition for terrorism: "All
criminal acts directed against a State and intended or calculated to create a
state of terror in the minds of particular persons or a group of persons or the
general public".
[4] In 1999 a UN Resolution was passed in which a
rather clear language was used to define
and condemn terrorism:
1. " Strongly condemns all acts, methods
and practices of terrorism as criminal and unjustifiable, wherever and by
whomsoever committed;
2. “Reiterates that criminal acts intended or
calculated to provoke a state of terror in the general public, a group of
persons or particular persons for political purposes are in any circumstance
unjustifiable, whatever the considerations of a political, philosophical, ideological,
racial, ethnic, religious or other nature that may be invoked to justify
them". (GA Res. 51/210 Measures to eliminate international terrorism).
[5] In order to cut through the Gordian definitional knot,
terrorism expert A. Schmid suggested in 1992 in a report for the then UN Crime
Branch that it might be a good idea to take the existing consensus on what
constitutes a "war crime" as a point of departure. If the core of war
crimes - deliberate attacks on civilians, hostage taking and the killing of prisoners
- is extended to peacetime, we could simply define acts of terrorism as
"peacetime equivalents of war crimes". See: UNODC - Terrorism
Definitions.htm, Monday, 14 November 2005
[6]. The name comes from the Medieval
Latin assassinus (Hachischins in French) identifying Ismailian Moslems
of West Asia.
[7]. In this incident, Saudi security
forces, after initial difficulties, were able to suppress the violence. While
Saudi Officials denied “foreign government involvement” in these operations led
by “religious extremists;” later on intelligent sources found unequivocal
evidence of the Soviet, Libyan and South Yemeni (PDRY) hands in the trouble.
See e.g. Gregory Copley, “The Troubled Middle-East: More Fluid, More Important
than Ever,” Defense and Foreign Affairs 6 (1980), p. 10.
[8] The main structure of this paper is
taken from : Ali-Asghar Kazemi, Religion and Politics: In Search of
Compatibility and Compromise, Monograph, Tehran, 1985
[9]. cf. “Focus on Terrorism,” Orbis
19, No. 4 (winter, 1976), passim.
[10]. Quoted by Maurice Tugwell, “The
Utility of Terror,” Jane’s Defense Review 2(1980), p.151.
[11]. Specialists have suggested that
one way to curb terrorism is to make it less attractive to adventures who seek
to gain publicity, simply by not giving them this opportunity in mass media.
See e.g. “Ten Ways
to Fight Terrorism,” Newsweek, The International Newsmagazine, July 1, 1985, pp.20-23.
[12].
A number of successive bloody
terrors and explosions in post-revolution Iran claimed the lives of hundred of
very important political and religious figures, including members of the
parliament, cabinet ministers, Islamic Republican Party’s chief ideologue, and
above all the president and the prime Minister. For an account of these events
see: “Iran,
A Government Beheaded,” Time, The Weekly Newsmagazine, no. 37, September 14, 1981,
pp.10-12. In connection with these terrorist activities whose real culprits are
not yet quite known but are claimed to be the Mojahedine Khalq Organization
(MKO), observers believe that the Islamic regime of Iran has successfully passed the
test of survivability and thenceforth started systematic persecution of
political dissidents.
[13].
The Soviet Red Army moved in to Afghanistan
in December 1979.
[14] Significant Terrorist
Incidents, 1961-2003: A Brief Chronology, Historical Background Office of the Historian Bureau of Public Affairs- U.S.
Department of State
[15] Terrorist Attacks on U.S. Homeland, September 11, 2001:
Two hijacked airliners crashed into the twin
towers of the World
Trade Center.
Soon thereafter, the Pentagon was struck by a third hijacked plane. A fourth
hijacked plane, suspected to be bound for a high-profile target in Washington, crashed into
a field in southern Pennsylvania.
The attacks killed 3,025 U.S.
citizens and other nationals. President Bush and Cabinet officials indicated
that Usama Bin Laden was the prime suspect and that they considered the United States
in a state of war with international terrorism. In the aftermath of the
attacks, the United States
formed the Global Coalition Against Terrorism.
[16] We don’t want to engage
into act of terror committed by armed forces during active hostilities and
international wars, which are essentially covered by laws of war as well as 1949
Geneva
Conventions and its related 1977 protocols covering domestic conflicts.
[17].The
alleged cooperation, support or machination of terrorist activities by the East
and West secret services or countries such as Libya, Iran, Cuba, etc. are examples of such
contentions.
[18] The Security Council has
established an “international independent investigation Commission” based in Lebanon to
investigate the killing of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. To ensure an
effective probe into Hariri’s murder, the Council calls on Lebanese authorities
to grant the Commission full access to information relevant to the inquiry. If Beirut fails to cooperate
with the UN investigation into the “terrorist act,” it could face UN sanctions
which seek to root out terrorism See: Security Council Resolution 1595 (April 7, 2005).
Following the submission of the first stage
report of the investigation to the Security Council, a second resolution was
adopted. In this resolution, the Security Council calls on Syria to
cooperate with the efforts to investigate the assassination of former Lebanese
Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. To obtain the consent of veto-wielding China and Russia, the US, Britain, and France agreed
to replace the threat of sanctions against Damascus by a warning of "further
action" if Syria
fails to collaborate. See: Security Council Resolution 1636 (October 31, 2005)
[19]. The Killing of: the Egyptian
President Anwar Sadat in 1983 by religious groups belonging to Moslem
Brotherhood, the Lebanese President Bashir jamayel by religious rivals, the
Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by Sikh religious fanatics in 1984, and the
unsuccessful attempt at the life of world religious leader Pope John Paul II
are among the many terrorist actions conducted directly or indirectly under the
influence of religion.
[20]. The hostage taking of the American
diplomats in Tehran
by Moslem Students (of the Imam’s Line), which later was endorsed by the
revolutionary regime, has been labeled by western analysts as “terrorism by
analogy” aimed at humiliating the United States. This tactics
succeeded to blackmail the incumbent president (Jimmy Carter) into impotence
and ultimately changed the course of domestic US politics and international
relations, by removing the frustrated president from the White House.
[21]. See e.g. Alf Andrew Heggoy, Insurgency
and Counter Insurgency in Algeria (Bloomington, 1972), passim.
[22]. See: “Lebanon’s Holy Warrior; The lowly
Shiite Muslims seek power and revenge,” Newsweek, International
Newsmagazine, July 1, 1985,
pp.18-19.
[23] It is interesting to note
that Afghan freedom fighters were helped by Moslem zealous of other Middle
Eastern countries and they were equipped and supported by the United States.
Surprisingly, Ussameh Bin Laden, the notorious Al-Qaeda terrorist head and some
of his entourage are citizen of Saudi
Arabia.
[24]. In both cases the two Superpowers
have used all kinds of military means, short of nuclear weapons, in order to
bring the freedom fighters to a situation to accept the status quo and
to give up hope. The United
States has failed to achieve this objective,
and the Soviets were not be able to succeed in their attempt.
[25]. There are various Shiite groups now
claiming to be engaged in Jihad, Islamic Holy War, e. g.: Hezbollah,
and Al Dawa Islamiya.
[26]. Notice that I have benefited from
the above mentioned short essay “Defenders of the Faith,” in exposing the idea
in a different manner in the development of the subject under consideration.
[27]. CF. e.g. Brian M. Jenkins, “High
Technology Terrorism and Surrogate War: The Impact of New Technology on
Low-Level violence,” in Geoffrey Kemp et al. The Other Arms Race,
(Lexington, Mass: Lexington Book, D.C, Heath & Co. 1975), p. 91.
[28]. The withdrawal of US and French
forces from embattled Lebanon,
following Moslem suicidal attacks on their military installations comes to mind
in this connection.
[29]
It has to be noted that some countries
are openly inviting devoted Moslem youngsters to sign up for the “Army of
Volunteer Martyrs’’ in order to use them for suicidal attacks against their
potential enemies. They are being trained and prepared for martyrdom. In their
view, this is some sort of deterrence vis-à-vis powerful states who want to
dictate their will to other nations. This gruesome tactic indeed may intimidate
those for whom life is a precious thing and are ready to pay any price in order
to save the soul of a an innocent human being.
* Ali Asghar Kazemi is professor of Law and International Relations in Tehran-Iran. Students, researchers, academic institutions, media or any party interested in using all or parts of this article are welcomed to do so with the condition of giving full attribution to the author, Scholar -Journal and the Middle East Academic Forum. ©All Copy Rights Reserved.
