Matt Johnson

*Originally published on The News Hub, November 19, 2015

You don’t need to be a counterterrorism expert to know there will be another Paris or Beirut – another pious killing spree in the heart of a major international city. Nor do you have to be an anthropologist or a religious scholar to predict which holy text will inspire it (in case you skimmed over that link – or you’ve been hibernating since last Friday – I’m talking about the Koran).

Does this elementary observation make me an Islamophobe? Does it make me a bigot? Plenty of people would say yes, even if they thoroughly understand the savage reality of jihadism in the 21st century.

This cognitive dissonance must be challenged. When an ideology is reliably associated with violence – even across countries, cultures, and socioeconomic circumstances – we should be able to scrutinize it openly. A failure to do so will cause two problems: first, it’ll disarm reform-minded Muslims by providing a rhetorical escape hatch for fundamentalists (who will be able to scream “Islamophobia” instead of being forced to defend their interpretation of the faith). Second, it’ll prevent non-Muslims from having an honest conversation about the doctrines of Islam and their impact in the world.

As one of the world’s most cosmopolitan cities mourns its dead and the Islamic State plans its next repugnant assault on civil society, it’s time to illuminate the chasm between honesty and bigotry on the topic of Islam.

After New York, Washington, D.C., Bali, Madrid, London, Mumbai, Nairobi, Peshawar, Beirut, and Paris (I could go on, but it’d take you a few hours to read the list), we can be almost certain that the next religiously-motivated mass atrocity will be perpetrated by jihadists. Note a few things about that sentence: by “religiously-motivated,” I mean the attack will have specific scriptural justifications. By “mass atrocity,” I mean something like Paris or 9/11. And by “jihadists,” I mean violent Islamists who want to impose their dogmas on the rest of the world.

In spite of all the soggy “religion of peace” propaganda, it’s clear that members of the Islamic State take their faith extremely seriously and read its texts with assiduous care. But whenever they explain their revolting behavior with meticulous citations of the Koran and the Hadith, we close our eyes and cover our ears. For example, Hillary Clinton wonders why their “behavior is so barbaric and so vicious” and concludes that their driving motivation is not the establishment of a caliphate, but a “lust for killing and power.” This fog of pseudo-psychology is meant to obscure the obvious religious antecedents of their crimes. It’s why politicians incessantly label jihadists psychopaths and nihilists instead of acknowledging the firm theological foundations of their actions.

The Islamic State enslaves infidels, rapes women, crucifies and beheads apostates, taxes and subjugates Christians and Jews, conquers territory, spurns democracy, and murders homosexuals because the Koran and the Hadith give it explicit permission to do so. Faced with this catalog of religious horrors, Marie Harf tells us that jihadists just need jobs. Meanwhile, President Obama hastens to remind us that Christians weren’t so nice during the Crusades (which would have been a great argument six or seven hundred years ago). He confidently announces that the Islamic State “speaks for no religion” and insists that no faith “teaches people to massacre innocents.”

Unless, of course, those innocents happen to be “infidels”: “Believers, make war on the infidels who dwell around you. Deal firmly with them. Know that God is with the righteous” (Koran 9:123). It isn’t difficult to imagine this insidious verse dancing around in Abdelhamid Abaaoud’s head when he tweaked his plan to massacre hundreds of innocent Parisians as they enjoyed their Friday night.

I’m no theologian, but here’s another verse that doesn’t strike me as particularly peaceful: “Let those who would exchange the life of this world for the hereafter, fight for the cause of God; whoever fights for the cause of God, whether he dies or triumphs, We shall richly reward him” (Koran 4:74). Picture the salubrious effect that such an emphatic celebration of martyrdom and holy war will have on the next suicide murderer as he straps on his bomb vest. By the way, I know there are equally repellent verses in the Old Testament. Just as they’ve been responsible for slavery, genocide, and misogyny in the past, Koranic dictates are largely to blame for the massacres in Paris and Beirut, the abuse of women and secularists in the Muslim world, and so on. Citing one doesn’t disprove the other.

How many innocent people have to die at the hands of a marauding death cult before we confront its ideology – a system of belief that can enthrall a British rapper as easily as a former Baathist? How many times is Obama going to use an amorphous word like “extremism” to describe what is actually a diligent implementation of Islamic doctrine? What “rationale” does Secretary of State John Kerry see behind the slaughter of cartoonists and writers at Charlie Hebdo? Why are people like Maajid Nawaz and Sam Harris endlessly vilified and slimed for making lucid points about the connection between Islamic belief and action?

We aren’t at war with Islam. In the coming years, our most important allies will be moderate, reformist Muslims who have no interest in foisting their faith upon others. There are many millions of Muslims who fit this description, and we must do anything we can to help them defeat the sadistic theocrats who want to drag them back to the 6th century. But we won’t be able to do this until we recognize that noxious ideas can easily make the transition from a holy book to a jihadist’s brain. Liberal Muslims will have a hard time combating fundamentalism if Islamic fundamentals continue to be considered socially and intellectually untouchable.

In other words, they won’t be able to fix the problem until people start admitting that it exists.