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How
Terrorism Harms Radical Islam
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An epidemic of recent high-profile attacks by Muslims in the name of
Islam – in Canada, Israel, Nigeria, Australia, Pakistan, and France –
raises an obvious question: How do the Islamist perpetrators figure that
murdering an honor guard, driving cars into pedestrians, slaughtering
non-Muslim bus passengers, taking hostage the patrons of a café, or
massacring army kids and cartoonists will achieve their goal of applying
Islamic law and building a caliphate?
Logically, their violence only helps if it terrorizes their enemies
and compels them to bend to the Islamists' wishes; intimidation, after
all, is the essence of terrorism. Sometimes, Islamist terrorism does
achieve this objective. For example, to stay out of trouble, a sizeable
number of artists
have censored themselves concerning Islam; and the botched government
response to the 2004 Madrid train bombings helped the opposition party
win an election, then withdraw Spanish forces from Iraq.
As a rule, however, terrorism leads not to intimidation but to anger
and hostility. Instead of cowing a population, it raises consciousness
and provokes hatred for the Islamist cause among Muslims and non-Muslims
alike. Rather than advance the Islamist cause, high profile acts of
violence harm it. Some prominent examples:
- 9/11 removed
Islamism from the shadows where it had flourished, stimulating an
American-led "war on terror" and a large increase in
anti-Islamic sentiment;
- The 2004 massacre
of school children in Beslan poisoned Russian attitudes toward
Muslims and helped Vladimir Putin consolidate power;
- The 2013 Boston
Marathon bombing locked down a large metropolitan area, giving
millions a first-hand taste of Islamist oppression.
- Wednesday's
killing of twelve in Paris created a national mood of defiance that
put Islamists on the defensive as never before. If the first hours
anticipate future developments, a significant portion of the French
electorate will demand more effective measures against radical
Islam.
The cover of
"Charlie Hebdo" that most bothered Islamists.
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Ironically, obscure acts of terror do not have this counterproductive
effect. To take one of many examples, when an Egyptian
Muslim beheaded two Coptic Christians in New Jersey in 2013, few took
notice and little anger ensued. Because of reluctance
among police, politicians, the press, and the professoriate, most jihadi-style
attacks of this nature tend not to publicized, thus avoiding an increase
in anti-Islamic sentiments. (Sadly, those with a duty to protect too
often hide the truth.)
If high-profile violence is counterproductive, why do Islamists
persist in this self-defeating behavior? Out of anger andbecause of a
violent disposition.
Yusuf Ibrahim
beheaded two Egyptian Christians in New Jersey – and hardly anyone
noticed.
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Anger: Islamists, especially the more extreme ones, exude
bitterness, bile, resentment, and envy. They celebrate the medieval
period, when Muslims were the richest, most advanced, and most powerful
of peoples, and interpret Muslim decline as the result of Western
duplicity and betrayal. Only by striking back righteously at these
conniving Crusaders and Zionists can Muslims regain their rightful place
of honor and power. Expressing anger becomes an end in itself, leading to
myopia, an inability to plan, an absence of strategic thinking, and
pulsating grandiosity.
A violent disposition: Exulting in their sense of direct
knowledge of God's will, Islamists favor violence. To make the enemy
cower in fear, then smite him is the ultimate Islamist dream, a
fulfillment of intense ill will, a triumph of Islam's superiority over
other religions and those Muslims who lack the fire of their faith.
Suicide bombings, beheadings, gangland-style murders, and other acts of
grotesque recrimination express a deep desire for vengeance.
In the long term, then, these acts of violence do immense damage to
the Islamist cause. Turned around, the victims of that violence – some
10,000 fatalities in 2,800 attacks in 2013 alone
– did not die in vain but unwittingly sacrificed their lives in a
dreadful war of wills. Targeted assassinations, such as those against the
French cartoonists, have an outsized impact on public opinion.
In sum, self-indulgence and strategic ineptitude are the hallmarks the
Islamist campaign. The catastrophe of the Islamist program is matched by
the ineptitude of its tactics. And so, I conclude, its fate will be the
same dust-heap of
history where fascism and communism can be found. Like those two
other totalitarianisms, it promises terrible destruction and many deaths
before ultimately failing. The war will be long and painful but in the
end, again, the forces of civilization will vanquish those of barbarism.
The recent drumbeat of terrorism in the name of Islam may appear to
help the Islamist cause. In fact, it brings its agenda closer to a
deserved collapse.
Mr. Pipes (DanielPipes.org,
@DanielPipes) is president of the Middle East Forum. © 2015 by Daniel
Pipes. All rights reserved.
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