The Genealogy of Terror

How to distinguish between Islam, Islamism and Islamist Extremism

Matthew L. N. Wilkinson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780367373719
• eBook ISBN: 9781315514437
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Law Theory & Practice
• Index: Law

In the first two decades of the twenty-first century, the events of 9/11, 7/7, the War on Terror and the Caliphate and atrocities of the so-called Islamic State have dominated Western consciousness and wreaked havoc in parts of the Muslim-majority world. In their wake, a spate of books has been written explaining the phenomenon of Islamist radicalisation and Jihadism.

Nevertheless, for normal citizens, as well as scholars of religion and legal professionals, the crucial question remains unanswered: how is mainstream Islam different from both Islamism and the Islamist Extremism that is used to justify terrorist violence? In this highly original book, which draws upon the author's experience as an expert witness in Islamic theology in 27 counter-terrorism trials, the author uses the idea of the Worldview, as well as traditional Islamic theology, to answer this question.

The book explains not only what Mainstream Islam, Ideological Islamism and Islamist Extremism are in their broad philosophical characteristics and theological particulars, but also explains comprehensively how and why they are both superficially related and yet essentially and fundamentally different. In so doing, the book also illuminates the cast of characters and the development of their ideas that constitute Mainstream Islam, Ideological Islamism and the Non-Violent and Violent Islamist Extremists who constitute the Genealogy of Terror.

1
Why this book is needed

A global crisis of misunderstanding: why this book is needed; who its author is; what this book will accomplish

From April 2015 to January 2016, the Syrian Civil War (2011–present) burst onto the Western European landmass and into the Western European consciousness in the form of three startling and related events, shattering the fragile illusion of separate Muslim Middle Eastern and (post-) Judeo-Christian Western Worlds.

First, the migrant crisis, described by the Economist newspaper in Biblical terms as an ‘Exodus’, saw hundreds of thousands of Syrians, Iraqis, Afghans, Pakistanis, Somalis, Sudanese and others pouring out of the Muslim-majority world heading inexorably in determined bands, first hazardously across the Mediterranean into Greece and then through the Balkans to Northern Europe and Germany in particular. They were ‘pushed’ by armed conflict, political instability, corruption and a lack of opportunity and ‘pulled’ by the open-arms policy of the German Chancellor Angela Merkel.¹

Second, on Friday 13 November 2015, Europeans experienced first-hand what, amongst other malaises, the refugees were so desperately and determinedly fleeing, as a series of coordinated terrorist attacks, including two suicide bombings outside the French National Football Stadium, ripped through Paris and its northern suburb, Saint-Denis. The terrorists claimed the lives of 130 people, mostly young people out for the night, including 89 rock-concert goers at the Bataclan theatre, where attackers took hostages before engaging in a standoff with police.

1 Merkel was both moved humanly by the plight of those in need and politically by the chance to redeem, once and for all, Germany’s moral standing on the world stage after the horrors of the twentieth century. Croucher, ‘Refugees Crisis’.

“Germany! Germany!” became the refrain of choice for Syrian migrants who in Berlin were greeted by the German public with cheers and cups of tea. Less stable, prosperous and confident European countries in central Europe responded differently by erecting fences and advocating the need for EU controls and quotas to deal with the overwhelming mass of unregistered foreigners at their gates as gradually the German electorate became more nervous about their leader’s humanity and largesse. Stone, ‘Germans Worry About Growing Migrant Numbers’.

The attacks were claimed by the so-called Islamic State Group (hereafter known as ISG), saying it was in retaliation against ‘the filthy French’² for the French airstrikes on ISG targets in Syria and Iraq. The attacks were organized in Belgium and perpetrated with French complicity.³ They were described by the French President, François Hollande, as “an act of war”.⁴

Finally, in the first week of 2016 reports started filtering into and through the European media of coordinated sexual assaults on female revelers⁵ at New Year’s Eve gatherings in the German city of Cologne by groups of Arab and Asian-looking young men who were immediately assumed to be asylum-seekers from Syria.

These reports were followed-up by further reports of similar attacks in other European cities from Helsinki to Zurich. The reports fueled the fear that the ethics and values that these predominantly male refugees had brought with them from the Islamic Middle East to Europe were fundamentally incompatible with core liberal European values such as respect for the persons and property of women.⁶

Why? How? What?

Intelligence agencies and security forces were not surprised by the Paris terrorist attacks⁷ as across Europe many Islamist terrorist plots had been thwarted since the 9/11 attacks by Al-Qaeda on the Twin Towers in New York, both before and after the rise to eminence of ISG in 2013–2014. Nonetheless, French and European publics were faced with three stark questions in the wake of such apparently mindless brutality, which, as they grieved, they asked themselves in this order of incomprehension: Why? How? What?

1. Why did a group of young people hate another group of young people so much that they were prepared to slaughter them in cold blood, while at the same time being prepared to exterminate themselves?⁸

2 Gardham, ‘ISIL Issued Warning to “Filthy French”’.

3 ‘November 2015 Paris Attacks’.

4 Despite the admirable resilience shown by the French national football team who played a much-lauded friendly match against England at Wembley Stadium, London the following Tuesday, the attacks traumatized northern Europe. As so often with terrorism, in the very short-term, in terms of terrorizing people, the attacks had worked. The City of Brussels, from where the attacks were masterminded, went into ‘lockdown’ for four days as one of the attackers went on the run. The German open-doors policy for migrants also came under scrutiny as it emerged that one of the terrorists had crossed into Europe from Syria posing as a migrant. Also, the so-called open-border Schengen Agreement within Europe itself was brought into critical relief as the unnerving fact emerged that a car containing assailants with seven Kalashnikov AK47 assault rifles had been driven across the France-Germany border without being apprehended.

5 Eventually around 500 criminal complaints were filed. BBC Europe, ‘Cologne Attackers “Were Migrant Men”’.

6 Connolly, ‘I’ve Never Experienced Anything Like That’.

7 Rogin, ‘CIA Director’.

8 Pizzi, ‘In Wake of Attacks, Parisians Ask, Why Here?’.

• 2. How was it possible that a group of such violent criminals could manage to plan and perpetrate an act of violence on such a scale in the heart of one of the most iconic European capital cities?
• 3. What manner of people were these who could carry out such a sub-human act of butchery, and what were the ideas that were driving and motivating them? This last question provoked a further sub-question driven by understandable fear:
  What, if any, were the differences in beliefs and ideas between the killers and other people who also called themselves Muslim who were living in the heart of Europe in great numbers, especially since at least some of these people seemed to espouse outmoded and unethical attitudes towards women as evidenced by the New Year’s Eve assaults?

Although it was conceived long before the events related above, this book will address some of these questions head-on.

It will address and answer the ‘What?’⁹ question by examining and describing broadly the nature and theological-philosophical characteristics of Mainstream Islam as honed by centuries of integrated religious belief and practice and as manifest in myriad denominational forms by as many as 1.8 billion people. This integrated combination of religious belief and religious practice is central to Islam and is hereafter referred to as ‘praxis’.

Comparatively, it will describe how Mainstream Islam differs fundamentally in nature from two different, though related, phenomena, which I, following others, call Islamism and Islamist¹⁰ Extremism.

In so doing, the book will also respond to why these distinct phenomena have come about and begin to suggest how professionals and others charged with a duty of care over young Muslims can respond to enable them to derive maximal benefit from their Islamic faith and avoid the pitfalls and dangers of its skewed, damaging Islamist relations.

It is crucial that all three of these questions are answered thoroughly and properly. The failure to perform a similar diagnostic and follow-up educational exercise after the attacks by Al-Qaeda on New York of 11 September 2001 led to catastrophic failures in understanding that caused fatal flaws in the Bush-Blair ‘War on Terror’ which have served to alienate, enrage and radicalize swathes of the Muslim-majority world, while palpably not winning the battle against Islamist Extremism. These failures of identification and academic (as opposed to security)

9 The so-called ontological/nature of being question.

10 Although to apply the word ‘Islamist’ to violent extremism is contentious, I think that it is correct since those who perpetrate such acts always do so using language and stating aspirations which they believe are derived from Islam. The charge that, for example, Irish Republican terrorism was never called ‘Christianist’ is not an apposite one. The IRA, although mostly Catholic, were fighting on the agenda of a united, republican Ireland, not, for example, to establish the Holy Roman Empire of Ireland or a global Catholic State.

intelligence as to the nature of Islamist Extremism are at least partially responsible¹¹ for the escalation and proliferation of Islamist terror that we are witnessing today.

Rationale: addressing a real, determinate absence

So this book addresses a critical and ‘determinate’ failure;¹² namely, that British, American and other governments have, for the past 15 years, been drafting legislation and introducing education and preventive national policies targeting Violent and Non-Violent Islamist Extremism without defining in sufficient depth or detail what the natures of Violent Islamist Extremism (VIE) and Non-Violent Islamist Extremism are.

That is to say, governments and think tanks have tended to address the ‘How to respond?’ question without understanding in sufficient depth or detail what it is that they are addressing. No one has, as yet, provided a systematic and philosophically robust account of the similarities and crucial differences between Mainstream Islam, Ideological Islamism,¹³ Non-Violent Islamist Extremism and Violent Islamist Extremism, and such a robust account is what this book intends to provide.

Making clear distinctions between religious/ideological phenomena and their adherents

This book aims to make clear, robust distinctions between the natures of three religious/ideological phenomena, which I will characterize as distinct Worldviews:

• 1 Mainstream Islam;
• 2 Islamism (sometimes referred to elsewhere as ‘Political Islam’¹⁴);
• 3 Islamist Extremism (see Figure 3.1 and Plate 1).

This includes identifying and characterizing some ‘grey’ areas between these phenomena:

• 4 ‘Activist’ Islam, which is, broadly, a part of Mainstream Islam but intersects with Islamism;
• 5 Non-Violent Islamist Extremism, which lies between Islamism and Violent Islamist Extremism and sets up the Worldview of Violent Islamist Extremism without directly encouraging violence (see Figure 1.1 and Plate 1).

These Worldviews are not, in any theological sense, denominational, but rather are supra-denominational. Muslims from different theological denominations or persuasions–Sunni, Shia, Sufi, Salafi, Maliki, Hanafi, Deobandi or

11 Burke, The 9/11 Wars; Richardson, What Terrorists Want.

12 Bhaskar, Dialectic.

13 This book will use the term ‘Ideological Islamism’. This may seem to some to be a tautology since Islamism is, by its nature, a political ideology. However, I feel that it is important to stress its nature is primarily ideological.

14 Incorrectly in my view for reasons that will be explained in Cha...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Why this book is needed
• 2 The roots of Islam, Islamism and Islamist Extremism: the historical fault lines of Islam
• 3 The Worldviews of Islam, Islamism and Islamist Extremism
• 4 Basic beliefs, practices and characteristic themes of Islam, Islamism and Islamist Extremism
• 5 Mainstream Islam: the people, texts and contexts
• 6 Islamism: the people, texts and contexts
• 7 The Genealogy of Terror: the people, texts and contexts of Violent Islamist Extremism
• 8 A second Age of Extremes or a second Age of Enlightenment?
• Appendix 1: Basic Guides to Mainstream Islam
• Appendix 2: Digital Islam
• Glossary of key terms and names
• References
• Index