Surely They Can't Really Believe That?
How Islam Benefits from Secular Non-Comprehension of Religious Motives
Large segments of Western society are now so thoroughly secular in outlook that perhaps most Westerners find it difficult to appreciate the power of religious impulses to motivate certain attitudes and actions. We have become so used to analyses of the world in terms of psychological, political, and sociological categories that any statement of a purely religious motive is almost bound to be met with utter incomprehension.
You could almost feel sorry for the poor jihadis who are doing their level best to convince Westerners that they do what they do to please Allah, only to be met with protestations that they are motivated by foreign policy, psychological stress, status anxiety or whatever else the “flavor of the month” happens to be.
The futility of attempting to find non-religious explanations for Islamic terror is illustrated by the fact that jihadis come from all sorts of educational backgrounds (from those who are virtually illiterate to holders of doctorates), occupy every rung of the ladder in terms of social mobility and hail from every country where Muslims are found. They only have one single thing in common – religious belief in the truth of Islam.
An interesting way in which the power of the Muslim religion to change attitudes can be seen is in the impact of conversion. A frighteningly large number of converts to Islam have committed acts of violence against unbelievers over the past decade. These people have often lived quite happily in their communities (think of all the newspaper articles describing perpetrators as “just a regular guy” before conversion to Islam). This was eventually changed into a burning hatred, to the point of wishing to physically harm members of those same communities.
What changed? Simple: Converts did not believe in Islam and then they started to do so (i.e., a change in religious convictions occurred). With that came a certain set of attitudes. If you are tempted to immediately protest that such converts “misunderstand Islam”, I would point out that it is utterly remarkable that so many people in so many different contexts “misunderstand” Islam in the same way.
Hard as it may be to get our heads around this, we must come to understand that when someone says, “I am about to cause carnage for the sake of Allah”, he may actually believe that what he is about to do will indeed be to the glory of Allah. This means, among other things, that the impact of the texts that I discuss in my articles, as potential sources of religiously inspired violence, have to be taken seriously.
For much more about the links between Islamic teaching and violence, please see my book ‘Nothing to do with Islam - Investigating the West’s Most Dangerous Blind Spot’.
Kind regards,
Peter
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