Terrorism: A Look Beyond Stereotypes

This past fall, I attended a lecture at the University of Montana presented by Dalia Mogahed, senior analyst and executive director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies and co-author with John L. Esposito of Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think. This book presents the results of the first ever data-based analysis of the points of view of Muslims, sampling more than 90% of the global Muslim community. It was funded 100% by Gallup as part of its research and development efforts. Here is an overview highlighting some of the main points I picked up from that talk, and why I found them encouraging.

In light of the attempted bombing of an American airliner on Christmas Day, I would like to revisit some of those points. First and foremost, I would like to examine a couple of common mistaken assumptions. Many Americans erroneously believe terrorism against U.S. targets is a function of hatred of American culture or values, and many erroneously believe the religion of Islam to be responsible for terrorism. However, the data gathered by the Gallup World Poll do not support these misconceptions.

When asked, “What do you admire most about the West?” Muslims surveyed ranked technology first and liberty/democracy second. Americans surveyed shared these same top two answers but in the reverse order. Further, when asked that if they were drafting a constitution for a new country, would they guarantee freedom of speech, defined as “allowing all citizens to express their opinions on political, social, and economic issues of the day,” a vast majority of Muslims said they would include that. This belies the hard-peddled notion that “they hate us for our liberty” and instead demonstrates evidence of common ground.

When asked whether the 9/11 attacks were justified (scale of 1-5), Muslims who responded that the attacks were completely justified represented just 7% of respondents. 55% said that the attacks were completely unjustified. Moreover, of the group who believed the attacks to be completely justified, not a single respondent, when asked about the reasoning for their response, gave a religious reason. The reasons of all these respondents were secular, for example, political grievances. On the other hand, moral/religious objections were common among respondents who said that the attacks were in any degree unjustified, with many of them citing specific passages in the Koran to support their objections. In other words, the data indicates that sympathy for terrorism does not correlate with religiosity but rather precisely the opposite- that religiosity correlates with intolerance of terrorism.

So it behooves us, particularly with regard to this week’s bombing attempt, to set aside the stereotypes for a moment and dig a little deeper for a better understanding of what is happening. Simon Tisdall of the UK’s Guardian sheds some light on the circumstances leading up to the attack:

According to a report aired on 18 December by the American ABC News network and not denied by the White House, US and Yemeni government forces jointly targeted al-Qaida training camps in the Arhab district, 60km north-east of the capital, Sana’a on 17 December. Another alleged camp in the village of al-Maajala, in Abyan, 480km south-east of Sana’a, was also hit after US officials determined “an imminent attack against a US asset was being planned” there.

Both targets were bombed repeatedly from the air by Yemeni air force planes. Subsequent official estimates said about 35 militants were killed. But Yemeni opposition spokesmen said a total of between 60 and 120 people had died during bombardments of the two targets and a third location. They said many of those killed were civilians, including women and children. They denied the villages contained al-Qaida camps.

According to an Associated Press report, also published on 19 December, residents of Abyan said there was no al-Qaida training camp in the area and that the air attack had destroyed homes – a collection of mud brick houses, huts and tents – in the rural tribal area. The report said a mass grave had been dug for those killed.

Obama’s actions in supporting the Yemen attacks appear to have had a bigger than expected impact. In a statement issued on Monday claiming responsibility for organising the failed bombing of Northwest Airlines flight 253, al-Qaida said the plot was specifically intended to avenge US attacks on the group in Yemen and “unjust aggression on the Arabian peninsula”.

“From here, we say to the American people: since you support your leaders and you stand behind them in killing our women and our children, rejoice for what will do you harm. We have come to you with slaughter and we have prepared for you men who love death as you love life,” that statement said.

The group claiming responsibility for the attack has clearly stated that the attack was motivated by plausible humanitarian and political grievances. To dismiss this possibility out of hand, instead chalking the incident up to reasons we’ve made up ourselves out of thin air, would be truly irrational. This explanation is not only consistent with the results of the Gallup World Poll, but it is also empirically consistent with incident after incident of terrorism in United States history.

Consider Ivan Eland’s 1998 foreign policy briefing published by the Cato Institute entitled Does U.S. Intervention Overseas Breed Terrorism? The Historical Record. Eland documented dozens of terrorist attacks against United States targets between 1968 and 1998 motivated by U.S. intervention overseas. Click through to the report to read about each incident he examined. He pointed over a decade ago that:

The logic behind the claim that there are other primary causes for terrorism against the United States needs to be examined. Many other Western nations are wealthy; have an extensive industrial and commercial presence overseas; export their culture along with their products and services; and believe in religious freedom, economic opportunity, and respect for the rights of the individual. Yet those nations–Switzerland and Australia, for example–seem to have much less of a problem with worldwide terrorism than does the United States.

According to the U.S. State Department’s Patterns of Global Terrorism: 1997, one-third of all terrorist attacks worldwide were perpetrated against U.S. targets. The percentage of terrorism targeted at the United States is very high considering that the United States–unlike nations such as Algeria, Turkey, and the United Kingdom–has no internal civil war or quarrels with its neighbors that spawn terrorism. The major difference between the United States and other wealthy democratic nations is that it is an interventionist superpower.

I hope we all keep in mind another point made by Mogahed in her presentation, and by her and her co-author in their book, as we are faced with an overabundance of extremist portrayals of Muslims in the coming days and weeks in the mainstream media. Portrayals of Muslims in the media have failed to represent the Muslim world with any reasonable degree of accuracy. In a survey of the U.S. media, 53% of the time Muslims were represented by militants whereas 62% of the time Christians were represented by religious leaders. Yet militants are only a tiny, tiny fraction of the more than 1 billion people in the Islamic faith community.

If the United States is ever to effectively deal with the issue of terrorism, we must move past inaccurate collectivist stereotypes and emotionally-driven knee-jerk reactions to just go out and satiate anger by senselessly killing more and more people. I encourage everyone to consider whether periodically throwing more combustibles on a fire is really a good way to put it out. I also hope each of us gives some thought as to what role propagating collectivist stereotypes may have in stoking that fire, and whether pro-freedom advocates ought to be a part of that.