Terror in the Name of God

TERROR IN THE NAME OF GOD

Ewelina Poliwka

In this reading of Terror in the Name of God by Mark Juergensmeyer, explores the most controversial issue in that these perpetrators were Muslims and acted in the name of Allah. Juergensmeyer states, The term 'terrorism' has more frequently been associated with violence committed by disenfranchised groups desperately attempting to gain a shred of power or influence...some of these groups have been inspired purely by secularism”.

Since the attacks to the towers of World Trade Center in America, the issue of terrorism in Islam has been brought to the international agenda. These attacks were committed by El-Qaeda (the religious terrorist group)in the Middle East.

So, does this make Islam the religion of peace or hatred? Taking somebody 's life for any reason is disallowed in Islam, so these behaviors performed by those murderers are already prohibited because Allah is the only one that can take a life.

I gathered from the reading that in fact, there is a difference between evil committed by people who happen to be religious and evil promoted in the name of religion. Sometimes the connection between religion and violence is tenuous, sometimes it is explicit. It is almost always complex and bound up with other causes (social, historical, economic, cultural, or political), but at the end of the day we must admit that there is far too much violence in the world that is fomented with a specifically religious rationale, motivation, or justification.

Why and how people commit violence and evil in the name of religion might seem inexplicable. At a minimum we should not remain silent when we see religious violence but rather name it for what it is.

The growth of terrorism in the Middle East is generally ascribed to the tendency to suppress democratic expression and freedom of speech. The use of violence is often considered an essential tool of the Islamist movement, whereas in actual, it remains a detour. The level of terrorism logically depends on how it is defined, and in particular how to separate terrorism from acceptable political violence or just war concept in religious realm. At present, a normative problem is that there is no readily accepted definition of terrorism. This problem becomes especially stern when the violence targets innocent victims.

Juergensmeyer further points out the unsound reasoning behind this so-called “Islamic terrorism” is that fundamentalist beliefs make adherents psychologically predisposed

...