Terrorism is not about perverting Islam

This is an article I wrote in 2016 on Almakhazin, a website that I founded with other Muslim activists.

I argued that we should fully detach discussions of terrorism from Islam. It has absolutely nothing to do with Islam. Terrorism is about power, asymmetric violence and soft targets.

Nothing about it is Islamic.

The PAP and ISD like to claim that I used Almakhazin to create support for terrorism.

I never did. I have always rejected it.

But I did use Almakhazin to reject the PAP, RRG-ISD false narrative that attaches terrorism to Islam.

This is my article from February 2016, a few months before I was detained without trial for 4 years 4 months.

This is one of the main reasons I was detained.

A lot of times, it is the Malay MPs who make things difficult for Islam and Muslims.

These MPs, who are intellectually defeated within their party, take their defeat to the community and expect us to agree with the view of those who defeated them.

Take Dr Maliki and Masagos Zulkifli’s recent discussions on terrorism for example.

These two PAP MPs used the PAP reference that terrorism is an Islamic problem.

According to CNA, in his discussion about terrorism, Dr Maliki “called on Muslims to reject any forms of violence in the name of Islam.”

Masagos made a similar call when speaking on the show Bicara.

His discussion on terrorism is based on ISIS as though that is the be all of terrorism.

Let us understand a few things about terrorism.

First, the statement that terrorism has nothing to do with Islam is not just a slogan. It really has nothing to do with Islam.

Second, one of the biggest mistakes that Muslims make when discussing terrorism is to argue it is a perversion of Islam.

It is not.

Third, terrorism is about power, disempowerment, asymmetric violence and soft targets.

Before we discuss why it is about power, asymmetry and targets, we need to first understand what terrorism means.

There are hundreds of definitions for terrorism. The easiest way to define it is “the use of violence to create terror for political objectives”.

Some governments try to further limit the definition. They try to qualify the definition to only refer to “non-state actors”. By qualifying it to non-state actors, they absolve themselves from being accused of terrorism.

But terrorism has been a tool by state and non-state actors for thousands of years.

Robespierre and his Committee of Public Safety in 18th century France headed the Reign of Terror that ended with his death.

Thousands were killed and many more imprisoned without charge or evidence.

He was not a Muslim. He was a Jacobin. And the Reign of Terror used the instruments of the state.

The massacres of Rohingyas by the Buddhist 969 movement in Myanmar, Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic, Kampuchea’s Pol Pot, used state instruments to inflict terror on the population for their political objectives.

It is not about Islam. They were not Muslims.

These people and groups did not pervert Islam for terrorism.

It was about power.

Similarly, when the PAP detained hundreds of political activists from the 1960s onwards, using violence against them by detaining them without trial…

For political purposes…that is an act of terrorism.

As Rosemary O’Kane argued, “As the cases of terror regimes, reigns of terror and state terrorism have shown, abandoning the due process of law and using indiscriminate violence are the hallmarks of terrorism in governments.” (115-116)

Non-state actors use terrorism when they are disempowered and used asymmetric warfare to pursue their goals.

Asymmetric warfare refers to wars where the belligerent parties do not face each other in a symmetric conduct. They primarily target civilians to create social and political unrest in order to achieve their political objectives.

Civilians become their primary focus because they may not be able to effectively target military personnel or they believe targeting soft targets to be more effective.

This tactic is used by LTTE, Shabiha, IRA and many others.

It has nothing to do with Islam.

These groups would appeal to their constituencies based on their common ideologies (whether it is the PAP arguing against communism or ISIS against Assad).

But these appeals are political narratives to justify political action.

At the same time, various actors have been accused of being terrorists to justify actions against them.

Nelson Mandela’s ANC was a proscribed terrorist organisation. It benefitted the apartheid South African government to claim the ANC was a terror organisation.

Steve Biko, leader of the Black Consciousness Movement, was murdered by the South African police after he was arrested for terrorism.

The prisons and gulags from Sydney to Siberia are filled with political activists who were accused of terrorism because they disagreed with the state.

These accusations justified state violence.

It had nothing to do with Islam.

Terrorism is not about perverting Islam.

To argue perversion of Islam is to claim that Islam can be perverted to allow terrorism.

It does not.

It is about power and disempowerment, asymmetry warfare and soft targets.

And terrorism is conducted by states and non-state actors.

Dr Maliki and Masagos’ party has been responsible for terrorism on political activists for several decades.

And no one can accuse the PAP of basing their terror on Islam.

Reference:
O’Kane, Rosemary H. “Terrorism (Harlow.” (2012): 22.

This article was first published on Almakhazin on 17th February 2016