Radical Islam and the sociology of terrorism

Religious Extremism: Radical Islam

Radical Islam is a multifaceted phenomenon, comprising numerous groups and movements that, while related (especially with regard to faith and anti-western mind-set), may embrace very different thoughts on means and objectives. Radical Islam is a politico-religious quest to establish - by violent means if necessary - a society that, as much as possible, tries to adhere to the perceived 'original' Islamic values. This perspective, for the time being, ignores the fact that interpretation of 'perceived 'original' Islamic values' varies among the different Islamic sects, and these sects are also concomitantly 'at war' with one another. Apart from Islamic extremist organizations and movements that focus on Jihad (in terms of armed combat) against western nations, there are other organizations, which mostly concentrate on "Dawa" (the spread of radical-Islamic ideology), As well, some other networks and organizations combine both Jihad and Dawa. This means that different kinds of threat can come from radical Islam, including terrorism (Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Affairs, 2004).

There is no single and widely accepted definition of terrorism. However, according to Ariel (2009), terrorism is the utilization of violence or the threat of violence to bring about fear in the society, to destabilize, or even to overthrow the regime and cause political change. Terrorism is the use of violence against innocent individuals, most often non-combatants so as to make political gains through propagation of fear and intimidation. Another approach has often been linked to the perpetration of crime against the poor and the less fortunate members of the society by disenfranchising them. Therefore, terrorism is fundamentally the unpredictable utilization of violence by certain organizations and networks against persons, groups, societies or countries in order for the perpetrators to achieve their goals. These goals and objectives include but are not limited to; destabilizing, overthrowing or changing current systems and institutions or retaliation for perceived harms committed (Wilson, 2010). Particularly, there are quite a number of motivations that drive terrorist organizations to mete violence against unsuspecting victims. These motivations include religious, political, social, personal, and moral incentives (Kingsley, 2010).

Terrorism is increasingly becoming a social problem because it results in the killing of many people, use and indoctrination of child-soldiers, costs huge amounts of money and demoralizes people. Most of the casualties are usually civilian non-combatants. Terrorism also results in a decrease in life expectancy, multiplies the risk of health problems, and results in psychological trauma to the survivors of terrorist attacks (Pakvis).

This paper discusses radical Islam and specifically focuses on terrorism. This particular topic has been chosen because of the rapidly increasing number of terrorist attacks committed by individuals in the name of religion. The paper will help explain various aspects of terrorism in different perspectives helping people to better understand the phenomenon. The sociology of terrorism that entails the social construction of terrorism, organizing terrorism, socializing terrorists, terrorism as political violence and theorizing terrorism is also covered in this paper (Turk, 2004). This paper also includes a literature review on research done on the topic. It also presents a theoretical standpoint on how sociologist might understand the religious extremism. Conclusion and reference sections are also provided.

LITERATURE REVIEW

There is no single and widely accepted definition of terrorism. However, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), terrorism is described in Terrorism 2002-2005(NIJ, 2011) as the criminal utilization of violence or force against individuals or property to coerce or intimidate a group of people, a government, or a part thereof, so as to further social or political agendas.

Jessica Davis in the paper "Women and Radical Islamic Terrorism: Planners, perpetrators, patrons?" describes the rise in the number of women participating in terrorism and explains why. She explains that gender biases can bring about bad policies and security judgments. She also points out why social relativism can prevent the success of counter-terrorism strategies. Her paper delves into the role of women in extremist Islamic terrorist groups, and whether or not the portrayal of the women by the media as somewhat uninvolved participants is accurate. In pursuing this line of inquiry, a review was done of the available data on women, radical Islam and terrorism. The review brought into light several stereotypes and assumptions, resulting in three theories: that women facilitate the entrance of men into extremist Islamic terrorist groups; that women are increasingly becoming active in extremist Islamic terrorism; and that women will continue to participate in terrorism activities because of the women's perceived tactical and strategic value as terrorists (Davis, 2006).

Olcott (2007) in the paper "The Roots of Radical Islam in Central Asia" details the background and development of Islamic terrorism in Uzbekistan and Central Asia. The paper provides answers to questions such as what Islamic extremism is and who among the devoted Muslims should be regarded as posing a threat to secular governments. It provides a detailed look at several renowned Islamic clerics from Uzbekistan who have been tagged as "Wahhabis" or "fundamentalist" and who played an instrumental part in the development of radical Islam in Uzbekistan. The paper also describes the teachings, teachers and the influence of the clerics on the politics in Uzbekistan and the social behavior of its citizens (Olcott, 2007).

In the paper "Religious Extremism in Sub-Saharan Africa" Irving Hexham describes the history of religion, religious extremism in Africa, and quite a number of thematic issues that the inhabitants face. Hexham analyzes the issue of "African Jihad" and extremist Islamic organizations. His paper goes even further to categorize religious extremism in terms of geographic locations. It discusses religious radicalization in East, West and South Africa (Hexham, 2002).

MAIN SECTION

Nowadays viewers are exposed to disturbing images on various media platforms regarding religious violence. For instance the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS; now IS, the Islamic State) video-records its beheadings and sends the footage to social media sites and news stations. Boko Haram in northern Nigeria parades hundreds of the kidnapped schoolgirls it has been holding hostage. The Al Shabaab in Somalia attacks a high-end shopping mall in neighboring Kenya's capital city Nairobi. These horrific acts that are splashed on various media platforms make us feel angry, helpless, fearful and perhaps even guilty, because it appears there is very little we can do to prevent them from occurring. Commentators trudge from one broadcaster to the other, giving their perspectives. Some of them condemn ISIS and Boko Haram, while simultaneously they assure their television viewers that these violent acts are not in any way related to true Islam. Other commentators are of the opinion that these two terrorist organizations do represent the true face of Islam. None of these positions is helpful. Both stances distort the fundamental nature of Islam and its relationship to violence and terrorism (Azumah, 2015).

Establishing whether an act of violence would have happened in the absence of religious belief can be challenging. Nonetheless, it is not enough to quite simply note, as several religious critics frequently do, that even the Bible sets death as the punishment for several everyday offenses including adultery and falsely swearing by God's name. Just to refresh our minds, for instance, Deuteronomy 13:7-11 instructs the faithful to stone to death everyone who attempts to divert their attention from Yahweh their God; the Quran 9:73 commands prophets of Islam to go to war against nonbelievers. These statements provide very little insight upon which to base an accusation of religious motivations (Krause, 2015).

Religion plays a key role in terrorism by giving moral legitimacy to the activities of these terror groups. It is obvious that all religions do impose a moral structure upon their devotees, thus allowing terrorists to present their causes in terms of absolute moral dichotomies, for instance, righteousness vs. evil. Even as religion legitimizes the terrorists' cause, it is particularly successful in demonizing those with contrasting views (Richard & Alcorta, 2010). The history of the world is dotted with many examples whereby the passion of those within a group was aroused and hatred against those not within the group ignited. Undeniably, the one determining factor of suicide terrorism is the religious difference between the terrorists and the victims. This occurs when a terrorist organization seems to be motivated by secularism. For example the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) are Hindus who are fighting a Buddhist majority. Consequently over 90% of the terrorist attacks targeted victims of opposing Religions (Kingsley, 2010).

Religion, however, plays a very minor role if any in the process of radicalization. It is more of an excuse instead of a reason. The actions of ISIS can be as much attributed to organized crime, political repression, and a union of convenience between secular, power-hungry Ba'athists as it is a consequence of distortion of Islamic beliefs and practices. According to Murad, Islamic scholars universally reject ISIS, while among most Muslims there is widespread rejection of Baghdadi and his vicious followers according to Mogahed. The supposed Islamic State "IS" is, thus as "Islamic" as the Democratic People's Republic of North Korea (DPRK) is "democratic" or as the British National Party (BNP) is "British." No credible analyst regards the DPRK as being representative of democracy or the BNP being representative of "Britishness." Similarly, not many critics argue that those who join the BNP do so because of their patriotic nature, they also do not insist that all democrats publicly condemn the undemocratic nature of DPRK (Hasan, 2015).

Several social scientists have asserted that the religious violence is brought about by prejudice - judgment due to lack of accurate information. Here, the prescription for healing religious violence is often increased exposure and education concerning different religious traditions. However as Robert Stark, a director at Baylor University's Institute for Studies of Religion, recently noted, it is often true beliefs with regard to different religions that differentiates major faiths. For instance, on the one hand Muslims reject the divinity of Jesus Christ; while simultaneously on the other hand Christians deny the claim that Muhammad is the successor of Moses and Christ. Therefore, as Stark argues, education is not necessary and increased contact and/or exposure to other religions can result in more hostility as well as understanding depending upon the individuals involved (Stark & Corcoran, 2014).

Due to the widespread consensus of Islamic traditions, it does not come as a surprise that Muslim scholars and organizations all over the world have consistently and publicly denounced Boko Haram, al-Qaeda and ISIS. These leaders and organizations include: the Grand Ayatollah Naser Makarem Shirazi of Iran, the grand mufti of Saudi Arabia, the grand imam of Al-Azhar University in Cairo, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, and the Ulema Council of Indonesia among many others. Several important Pakistani Muslim scholars have written books on the issue of jihad and two of them are worth a particular mention. Two of these scholars include Muhammad Tahir ul-Qadri and Javed Ahmad Ghamidi, both of whom have significant influence and followers. These authors wrote a book and issued a fatwa (a complete legal ruling) on the definition and conduct of Jihad. The fatwa forbids terrorism and violent revolts, by citing many Quran prophetic practices and traditions, including a series of comments from renowned legal and theological scholars over hundreds of years and across sectarian divides. The two authors declare several jihadi groups such as the Kharijites to be heretics, rebels and terrorists. Just recently, some 126 Islamic leading figures from all over the world published a signed open letter refuting the Islamic basis of ISIS ideology (Azumah, 2015).

THEORY

Conflict Perspective

Even though there are numerous variations in terms of conflict perspective for crime and criminality, they all entail confrontations or conflicts over scarce resources. These resources can be power, prestige, or economical. According to Marx and Engels (1848) there are essentially two different and conflicting classes in any particular society; the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Bourgeoisie refers to persons who own and control the means of production including labor, while proletariat refers to the rest of the people who do not have anything else to trade other than their own labor. To Marx, this accounts for the exploitative relationship between the two classes of society and even amplifies the perceived conflict between the two (Cino-lu & Ozeren, 2010).

Although classical conflict scholars did not come up with a separate position on terrorism, this does not mean that terrorism did not exist at their time. It did; however it was only on a smaller scale such that it was not significant enough for these scholars to come up with separate perspectives on it. Unfortunately, many modern conflict scholars feel the same way. As mentioned above, differing perspectives all suggest that various types of exploitations are the major sources of confrontations. With regard to the conflict perspective, discrimination is one of the expected outcomes of conflict. Discrimination has a huge impact; not only could it be seen as a driving force behind more conflict and discrimination, but also discrimination hardens the stances between groups in all spheres of conflict including terrorism (Cino-lu & Ozeren, 2010).

According to Chambliss (1973) who investigated societal discrimination, members of the upper classes of the society enjoy more tolerance from society compared to members of the lower classes of the society. This is seen in terms of the criminal/legal system, where there is perhaps favoritism for a perceived 'elite' and/or monetary class vs. The non-elite, even when they had committed similar crimes. It would be very interesting if we extend his findings to terrorism. As we noted earlier, conflict scholars and theorists have a strong belief that crime is an expected outcome of discrimination and conflict. According to these conflict theorists, a marginalized or disadvantaged group has no other option but to try and topple the system of exploitation they suffer from. Thus, criminals, including terrorists for that matter, become members of organizations or groups that are in the proletariat, and consider themselves to be disenfranchized. Even though people of the proletariat are still the major source of recruitment for terrorist organizations, new terror organizations do not reflect the expected social composition (Cino-lu & Ozeren, 2010).

CONCLUSION

The confrontations and key questions around terrorism today remain confusing. From one perspective, those involved in terrorist activities are convinced that their path is 'right', as they have chosen to use massive 'shock tactics' to convince non-believers in Islam that it is the only path. Simultaneously, those in the West who do not believe in Islam see only the terror and are confused by such actions; the Western perspective no longer views killing for faith as positive. A key difference in perspective is that Western political systems generally are distinct from the religious systems (as seen by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States -- separating religion and politics), whereas the Islamic political systems are fundamentally based upon religion.

Even though many scholars argue that religions are the root cause of all of today's terrorist attacks, recent studies have refuted this position. This has led to other scholars attributing modern terrorism to socio-political restrictions in repressive administrations. Another group of scholars argues that even though modern terrorism is at times provoked by socio-political demands in the social structures, because religion is a socio-spiritual phenomenon that influences individuals' lives, it cannot be absolved from terrorism in the modern world. Therefore these scholars are of the viewpoint that religion is consistently at the background of these terrorism, providing it with spiritual and moral legitimacy (Kingsley, 2010).