Islamic Responses to Terrorism
Sayyed Nadeem Kazmi

[continued...]

USA

Many commentators (15) have remarked that America’s anger in the wake of the 11^th September attacks is understandable and although one agrees that the United States has a legitimate claim in finding those it believes perpetrated this crime on its soil, one has to caution that this is not, was never, and should not be allowed to become 'America’s war”, as is still sensationally suggested in caption-form on the Fox News channel, for example. Terrorism was there before 11^th September and many countries – particularly within the Muslim world – have faced the cold calculating wrath of the terrorist for years. Thus, the issue of tackling the roots of terrorism is one that is as relevant for America as it is for other countries. Timothy McVeigh, for example, was neither Muslim nor foreign to America. And grinding poverty, exploitation, and corruption are American problems just as much as – if not to the same extent - they are problems of 'other” countries (16).

In the United States, the mood since 11^th September, 2001, has been decidedly hawkish, if not purposefully bellicose. Rather worryingly, some commentators on the more extreme end of the 'you are either with us or against us” camp, such as the right-wing Daniel Pipes (17) seem to be concerned that the Washington does not officially view Islam as inherently hostile to American 'values”, and suggests that 'the American ‘street’ does not view Islam as positively as do American politicians. He further likens the Administration’s attitude to a kind of 'appeasement”, a fantastic and dangerous turn of phrase - as if respecting the civil rights of American citizens who happen to be Muslim is tantamount to appeasing terrorism. 

Unfortunately, Pipes is not alone in his peculiarly Islamophobic hysteria. R James Woolsey, former director of the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), has spoken publicly of ‘the Red Menace that dominated our lives for nearly a half a century’ now being replaced by a ‘Green Menace sweeping throughout the Arab world’ (18). Sentiments such as those expressed by the likes of Pipes and Woolsey may have had some encouragement from the rhetoric employed by President George W Bush in the immediate aftermath of 11^th September when he clearly invoked the spirit of the medieval crusades. This was a badly calculated response, particularly when one considers how loaded the issue of the Crusades remains between some Christians and Muslims, as well as Jews, in parts of the world.

US Deputy Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz, described by former US ambassador Robert D Crane as 'the number-one reactionary conservative in the Bush administration” (19), was one of the earliest official voices who argued that one could only eliminate evil by eliminating states. Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld, as the leading principled or traditionalist conservative, eventually sided with the Government’s leading liberal, Secretary of State General Colin Powell, in declaring that victory against terrorism can come only from attacking poverty, illiteracy, and hunger as the breeding ground for tolerance of terrorism. Neither one suggested that the root of terrorism could be US foreign policies, in other words that the crisis is political rather than religious or civilizational.

The Arabocentric dimension of United States domestic policy vis-à-vis the perceived threat to homeland security is not exclusive to the 'post-9/11” scenario. The controversial 1996 Anti-Terrorism and Effect Death Penalty Act had earlier allowed the INS to 'arrest, detain and deport non-citizens on the basis of ‘secret evidence’ - whose source and substance is not revealed to the potential deportees or their counsel”, which civil rights lawyers at the time described as an unconstitutional measure used especially against Muslims and Arabs.

Earlier this year, a joint resolution, adopted by the US Senate and the House of Representatives, authorized the use of America’s armed forces against those responsible for the 11^th September attacks. This resolution (20), with integrated War Powers Resolution Requirements, allows the President of the United States (in Section 2) 'to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or [harboured] such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons”.

The abovementioned resolution can be seen as a follow-on from the pre-existing Executive Order that prohibits transactions with terrorists and their supporters (21). According to this Executive Order, 'grave acts of terrorism and threats of terrorism committed by foreign terrorists (acts recognized and condemned in United Nations Security Council Resolution 1368 of September 12, 2001, and United Nations Security Council Resolution 1269 of October 19, 1999) constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States”. This Executive Order, which can only be made by the President, was in furtherance of President Bush’s proclamation days after the 11^th September attacks (22), which declared a national emergency to deal with that threat: 'Because of the pervasiveness and expansiveness of the financial foundation of foreign terrorists, financial sanctions may be appropriate for those foreign persons that support or otherwise associate with these foreign terrorists”. 

WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY

At the international level, the most important and far-reaching development in terms of its effect on individual state responses to terrorist threats came in the passing of UN Security Council Resolution 1373 (23). This pulls together all previous resolutions dealing with terrorism, and invokes them under Chapter VII auspices, which deals with threats to, and breaches of, the peace and acts of aggression. Though it does not define ‘terrorism’, it makes it clear that the attacks of 11^th September can only be defined as terrorism. UNSC 1373 has been described by the more cynical as a blank cheque that intentionally leaves undefined all of its key terms. Indeed, though Security Council Resolutions can often be intentionally ambiguous, such constructive ambiguity as is prevalent within this particular resolution seems extraordinarily exceptional. Some international lawyers argue that 1373 would be referred to justify action taken without further Security Council approval (the preambulatory paragraph reaffirming nations’ rights to self-defence emphasizes that Security Council Resolutions are not required). By issuing a ‘decision’ about what each country must do to combat terrorism, Resolution 1373 has created a series of obligations under International Law that seem to go far beyond anything that existed previously. A very wide range of activities associated with terrorism are now criminalized, and countries are supposed to bring their domestic criminal statutes into conformity with international standards. By specifically referring to the right of self-defence, the resolution seems to legitimize unilateral military responses by states that are either attacked by non-state actors or fear that they might be attacked. Moreover, by creating a 'special action committee” composed of representatives of the Security Council, and setting a deadline of ninety days to report what actions have been taken, the resolution has established, at the very least, the beginning of a permanent international structure to coordinate anti-terrorism activities. In short, this has repercussions with potentially negative unintended consequences.

Another important piece of legislation is the new International Convention for the Suppression of Terrorist Financing (24). This creates an international legal framework for investigating, apprehending, and prosecuting those involved in terrorist financing and describes preventive measures to identify and choke off sources of income for terrorists and to restrict the movements of such funds across international borders.

PROBLEMS OF DEFINITION

Returning to the issue of rhetoric, of course, whether rightly or wrongly, President Bush did declare the September 11^th attacks on America – and any subsequent attacks anywhere - as an act of war, not an act of terrorism. This throws up an interesting legal and intellectual quandary. 'If it is determined that this attack was directed from abroad against the United States, it shall be regarded as an action covered by Article 5 of the Washington Treaty”, stated NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) Secretary-General, Lord Robertson, after a meeting of the North Atlantic Council a day after the attacks on New York City and Washington DC. Article 5 stipulates that an armed attack against one or several members shall be considered as an attack against all NATO members. This may also inadvertently have given succour to the view in Washington itself that a unilateral military response would not only be justiciable under the circumstances but acceptable by a mere nod and a wink from the other NATO members. In other words, a unilateral response in its physical manifestation might equally, symbolically, be interpreted as, in essence, a multilateral response.

Technically, war is defined as a state of armed hostility between two or more sovereign state entities, and not between a state entity and a non-state actor. This technicality has no resonance in practise, however, because neither a declaration of war nor an act of war is required for the legal use of military force against states or non-state actors, a principle established in 1812 by US actions against the ‘Barbary Pirates’ of North Africa, as well as examples of so-called gun-boat diplomacy since. The question is therefore hypothetical: whether the attacks by al-Qa’eda anywhere can be characterized as state acts because the groups are allegedly linked to, or supported by, particular states. This raises the legal issue of state responsibility (25). The view of the International Law Commission of late is that “the conduct of a person or group of persons shall be considered an act of a State under International Law if the person or group of persons is in fact acting on the instructions of, or under the direction or control of, that State in carrying out the conduct” (Article 8). Article 9 of the ILC Draft Report goes on to state that, “the conduct of a person or group of persons shall be considered an act of a State under International Law if the person or group of persons is in fact exercising elements of the governmental authority in the absence or default of the official authorities and in circumstances such as to call for the exercise of those elements of authority”.

It would seem, in corollary to the above, that in order for terrorist attacks to be construed as having an element of state responsibility, then the criteria of applicability is not just the nature or extent of state involvement, whether direct or indirect, but the relevance of that specific state involvement in the act or acts carried out by non-state actors. This would also seem to presuppose an assumption of there being command responsibility for such acts, which is already dealt with in other areas of International Law, and could make defensible asymmetrical responses to assymetrical threats. Indeed, whilst some experts (26) argue that, despite the unpredictable nature of the asymmetrical threat from non-state actors, it is widely accepted that unmatched US power (economic, cultural, diplomatic, and military) is likely to cause America’s adversaries to favour asymmetric attacks over direct conventional military confrontations, and that such an attack would be a transforming event, one could argue that such a position is cyclical in itself. Surely an asymmetrical response, even from a “sensible” nation state would be equally as unpredictable, and potentially more dangerous given the precedent it would presumably create in terms of the legitimacy of state responses to such threats.

Apart from the question of determining who was attacked, a parallel concern has been what sort of crime might one assume can define such an attack. Geoffrey Robertson QC, the leading British lawyer, has suggested that the definition of a ‘crime against humanity’ is wide enough to cover atrocities by a terrorist group organized on the scale of that which occurred on 11^th September. But many countries, including Britain, insist that it applies only to the acts of states and not of terrorists, however well organized and politically motivated those terrorists are, and regardless, presumably, of how and to what extent these non-state actors are supported. Robertson’s retort is that all belligerent groups, whether or not attached to a state, should be subject to the laws of war. That terrorism will henceforth be treated as a crime against humanity therefore permits the use of force against any sovereign state bearing responsibility for such a crime.

The argument for treating terrorism as a crime against humanity is not new, of course. In 1992, Alex Schmid, in a report for the United Nations Crime Branch, suggested that in order to cut through the Gordian knot of defining terrorism, it might be a good idea to take the existing consensus on what constitutes a ‘war crime’ as a point of departure. If the core of war crimes – deliberate attacks on civilians, hostage-taking and the killing of prisoners – is extended to peacetime, one could simply define acts of terrorism as ‘peacetime equivalents of war crimes’. In fact, the unintended – yet positive – consequence of such a definition could be the elimination of the distinction between terrorism by groups and terrorism by governments.

The issue of state-sponsored, or indeed state-enacted terrorism is one that few people seem prepared to discuss. And when they do, the debate is often limited to blaming the so-called ‘rogue states’, as characterized by remarks made by the Honourable Richard Perle at the Foreign Policy Research Institute Dinner, November, 2001 (27): “We can’t stop acts of terrorism, but we can reduce it to the occasional violent act of an individual or two if we can separate the terrorists from the state sponsorship that provides them with the essential means of carrying out their evil acts”. However, prominent journalists, such as The Independent (UK) newspaper’s Robert Fisk, have bravely defied convention and articulated “the other side of the argument”, bringing to light the clear discrepancies and contradictions on the part of those forces that deem themselves to be leading the war against terrorism. Such commentators have reasonably – indeed convincingly – argued that the ‘holier than thou’ stance of such powers is replete with hypocrisy. America’s unilateralist show of power and privilege vis-à-vis its open military hegemonism is viewed with particular cynicism by the respected war journalist, John Pilger, for instance, who pointed out in a recent article that, “Western terror is part of the recent history of imperialism, aword thatjournalists dare not speak or write”. Politicians, too, such as the Irishman, Conor Cruise O’Brien, have written that, “Those who are described as terrorists, and reject that title for themselves, make the uncomfortable point that national armed forces, fully supported by democratic opinion, have in fact employed violence and terror on a far vast scale than what liberation forces have yet been able to attain”. Why should the label ‘terrorist’ be applied to ‘freedom-fighters’, for instance, and not to national militaries? It is thus difficult to avoid the conclusion drawn by historian Frank Furedi (28), in his 1994 book, The New Ideology of Imperialism, that, “Terrorists become any foreign people you don’t like”, adding that terrorism is “redefined to serve as an all-purpose metaphor for the Third World, demanding concerted action from the West”. Addressing the United States Government directly, Mohsen Armin, Deputy of the Iranian Majlis, or Parliament, hoped that in the aftermath of 11^th September, a better understanding of the ‘right of nations’, as opposed to the right of a nation, would ensue.

Such constructive criticisms have also come, significantly, from nearer home. Dr Charles Graves, Secretary-General of Interfaith International, favours a global approach to religious ‘fundamentalism’, which the US, as a the “giant woken from its slumber of complacency” by the attacks of 11^th September, along with its influential international partners, notably the Europeans, ought to be elaborating within the context of a globalized world (29).

Former US ambassador Robert D Crane argues (30) that the Bush administration has invoked every possible cause for terrorism other than their own deliberate foreign policies, policies that have contributed to the terrorist mentality. He lists among these foreign policies, Chechnya, Kashmir, the Balkans, and Israel: “Anti-American movements are motivated primarily by active US support of secularized and xenophobic Zionism”. But whilst a resolution to the Palestine/Israel Question is doubtless essential, it is perhaps a little oversimplification to suggest that it is the only factor behind Islamism and the only or primary reason for radicalization in the Muslim world, ignoring other factors (such as disparities in wealth, totalitarianism, poverty, repression of individual liberties, elitist control of state structures and institutions). However, few can argue with Crane’s illuminating argument that “the greatest challenge to Americans’ commitment, courage and creativity lies not in enforcing stability through military might, which can never succeed in the long run, but in building security through foreign policies that address the political roots of terrorism”. It is this unilateral militarism versus multilateral justice dichotomy that has to be contextualized in order to galvanize an effective response to global terrorism, and will help as a practical process of engagement towards a common definition of terrorism.

Questions of definition, particularly but not exclusively in relation to terrorism, have been addressed throughout various international fora within the so-called developing world, for some time. At the OIC (31) meeting in Doha, in October 2001, the need to convene an international conference to define terrorism and draft a practical international plan to combat it, “provided the sovereignty of member states is respected within the framework of International Law” was underlined by Shaykh al-Thani, who hosted the high-level meeting. The conference was, moreover, mindful of the fact that most ‘Ulema distrusted any definition that might be imposed on them, although theoretically they too would want a universal definition. Definitions of terrorism can be slippery (32). If the definition is too broad, law enforcement’s reach could undermine civil liberties. Likewise, too broad a target for military response could do more harm than good. Clearly, the definition and perceived severity of terrorism will shift according to political perspectives. That there is a need for a working, operational definition of terrorism is not in doubt. However, such a definition has to be sophisticated, and customized for each case (33).

ISLAMISM

“Nothing has so diminished Islam in recent times as its politicization” (34), said Dr Kanan Makiyya at a symposium in October 2002, which explored contingency options in the event that the regime of President Saddam Hussein in Iraq should fall (note that this paper is being written at a time of heightened tension when, as vaguely part of the war against terrorism, Iraq has been given an ultimatum by an international coalition, led by the United States, to surrender its weapons of mass destruction or face an attack by the said coalition). The quality of Islamic education, scholarship and spiritual guidance declined dramatically, he argues, once the nationalist secular regimes of the post-colonial period came into existence and took over these functions.

An Islamist – and again we are on a sticky wicket so far as an agreeable definition is concerned - might be defined as one who follows one of the varieties of political or politicized Islam that has grown since the formation of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in 1928, and has become especially strong since ca.1970. This covers a range of views from moderate, gradualist to violent or terrorist / militant. Most Islamists believe in the application of a divinely-ordained Shari’a as the basic law, though they may differ in their interpretation of it. They also tend to be hostile to most governments of Muslim-majority states and to the policies of the West, especially the US, and to state this hostility in (partially) Islamic terms, which are in turn rejected by those scholars within Islam who deny any link between violent, overtly political struggles (however socially legitimate) and the religious faith of over a billion people.

The radical Islamist movement is a modern phenomenon, existing in a symbiotic relationship with other trends (35). It is rooted in the recurring cycles of revivals characteristic of Muslim history and is also a reaction to the severe crisis of modernity converging with the rise of charismatic prophetic leaders. It constitutes a religious reform movement and a political ideology that includes a social element of protest and a search for identity by the have-nots of the Muslim world against an oppressive world order. Islamist thought is, according to Dr S Parvez Manzoor (36), moving in a direction that makes all compromise with the modern ethos almost impossible. “It conceives of the imperatives of Islamic commitment in such fundamentalist terms that the very idea of a dialogue with the agencies of contemporary history appears heretical. Thus, for all its determination to bring Islam back to history, radical Islamist thinking promotes a worldview that is vehemently anti-political, just as it endorses a politics of revival that is blatantly anti-historical”.

The extent to which religion and politics are intertwined in the Arab / Muslim world is in itself a contentious issue. Graham E Fuller (37), a former director of the CIA who is now a senior thinker within the Rand Corporation think-tank, is of the view that by seeking to separate Islam from politics, the West ignores the reality that the two are intricately intertwined across a broad swath of the globe from northern Africa to South-East Asia. Although his argument, that political Islam, or Islamism, “remains the most powerful ideological force” in the Muslim world is a persuasive and logical one, his analysis seems to overlook the growing body of scholarship within the Muslim world that is, contrary to standard expectation, developing inherently Islamic theses opposing political Islamism as a legitimate third way within the intellectual world of Islam. Fuller’s hypothesis is therefore relevant to the Muslim social reality as it relates to the contemporary political and economic status quo ante in the Muslim world, but somewhat ignores the development of Muslim intellectual thought outside of a peculiarly Islamist context. Whilst one might accept his assertion that the Islamist phenomenon has multiple forms that are spreading, evolving, and diversifying, it is perhaps a little wishful and unfair to place the immense diversity of opinion and tendency within the Muslim world under the convenient banner of “Islamism”. Islamism is indeed a powerful ideology but it is largely alien to the Islam that is daily practised by the mass of the ordinary faithful.

But Islamism is about reform, modernism, and change, and about the convenience of using religion to justify political motivations and political ends. There are aspects of Islamism that have nought to do with religion, hence the fanaticism of the cold calculating wrath of the terrorist. Most Western observers, inadvertently or not, fall into the almost inevitable trap of an Orientalist worldview. Hence the relative ease with which Islam in toto is dissected and inevitably distorted, often to the point of caricature. Indeed, even the political evolution of Liberal Islamism is less a reflection of Islam as faith as it is a polemical exercise in apologetics. Islamism is a challenge to Islam, and it is only now that we are beginning to understand not only its inner dynamics but where exactly its origins might lie.