WEAK IN THE WORLD:

Islamic terrorism and the failure to separate the sacred from the civil. (Peter Sellick, April 06, 2004, Online Opinion)

It is important that we understand how and why we in the West have arrived where we are and where weakness exists, because we are faced with a force that does not recognise the distinctions between the civil and the sacred: Islamic terrorism. While Islam has inherited monotheism from Judaism it has not strongly developed the distinction between the civil and the sacred realm of human life. There is always a tendency towards theocracy. This means that the sacred must take on the tasks of the civil which by its very nature it is not equipped to do. When the civil powers of government do not have religious legitimisation they will be poorly developed and this will result in corruption and poverty. Civil power will be taken over by the tribal resulting in the feudalism of Afghanistan, the rich and powerful, resulting in the monarchy of Saudi Arabia or by Islamic clerics as in Iran and Afghanistan under the Taliban. The failure of the Palestinian Authority to produce a lawful society is but another example of the failure of civil rule in Islam.

The aim of Islamic extremism is to establish theocracies, states under the rule of Allah which means under the rule of the clerics. Such a situation will be the breeding ground for terrorist cells because they operate in the absence of strong civic control. Even though Islam may be described as a religion of law, the absence of civil law and the institutions that support it will produce lawlessness. How else can we describe Afghanistan under the Taliban or the situation in Palestine?

The confusion between the civic and the sacred is nowhere more obvious than the designation of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, recently assassinated by Israel, as the founder and spiritual father of Hamas. When we in the West think of a spiritual father we summon up the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Pope or the Dalai Lama. That a spiritual father would promote and plan suicide missions aimed at killing civilians is unthinkable. Yet we are expected to contemplate such a person in Yassin. In the West the use of force by the police or army is confined to the civil authorities who must act on behalf of the community and under the law. By contrast, Islamic terrorist groups operate under no civil authority and under no law. They are often under the control of a single charismatic individual who knows how to use religious language to direct his followers into the most appalling acts. This cannot be equated with the acts of an elected civil authority that are designed to protect the state against violent aggression and which are in proportion to the threat. The suicide bombing of a bus of civilians is not morally equivalent to the violent actions of a state specifically directed towards defending its own citizens.

The tendency of monotheistic religion to take everything over is limited in Christianity by Jesus’ refusal to allow himself to be used for civil purposes, to be crowned king or to take the part of the zealots who would oppose Rome with force. It is also limited by the theology of the cross that tells us that the power of God is shown in weakness. “God is weak in the world.” The crucified God does not take civil power for His own. This is not true of Islam for whom God may not be identified with humanity as one who dies. Allah is rather the divine lawgiver, the strict and distant God that fills all spaces. The theology associated with Allah is a theology of glory and power un-tempered by death and suffering. It is no wonder that its enthusiasts lean towards theocracy, there is room for nothing else.

That John Kerry seems not to understand the magnitude of this Reformation and wants to treat terrorism as a criminal matter should alone be sufficient to disqualify him from the presidency.

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 14, 2004 10:14 PM