Terrorism—A Cultural Phenomenon?

Ana Serafim

Introduction

This article is aimed at providing a cultural perspective on contemporary

terrorism. I will examine not domestic terrorism, but rather the form of terrorism
we are confronted with today: terrorism with global reach, terrorism without
borders and any conceptual limitations, terrorism that defines death and
destruction as achievements in themselves.

In my view, the ideological terrorism (such as the Red Brigade and the
Baader-Meinhof Gang) that plagued many Western societies in the 1970s and
1980s, the nationalist and ethnic discontent that has been and continues to be
the greatest inspiration for terrorists, and the religiously motivated forms of
terrorism all have a cultural aspect. Still, I will not focus particularly on any of
these types of terrorism, but I will rather try to find out what is culturally distinct
about today’s brand of global terrorism and which solutions, if any, can we find in
the realm of culture that will help us in the struggle against terrorism. This is not
because I underestimate the many and various manifestations of terrorism, but
because I am interested in today and tomorrow more than in yesterday. I am also
particularly interested in this new type of terrorism because I think that
contemporary forms of terrorism are more cultural in origin and nature than ever.

Analyzing culture as a category is not an easy task, and it is not a purely

scientific enterprise. What people think, how they think, and the way they react to
events are all influenced by culture. Even terrorists are products of culture. Thus,
regarding a definition of culture, most readers will probably be able to agree with
me only on the fact that there is much disagreement about the meaning of
culture, both as a word and a concept. I interpret culture in the usual social-
scientific sense of beliefs, values, and lifestyles on the world scene, with special
attention to religion as a central component. Obviously, culture is not only about
religion, but it is also true that the most prominent cultural dimension of twenty-
first-century terrorism can be found in religion. In particular, the events of
September 11 are deeply rooted in religious and cultural tensions sharpened by
the end of Cold War. So the focus of this article will be particularly on religion,
because I think that changes taking place in the area of religion throughout much
of the world are also working to reinforce the cultural differences between
societies, and differences between cultures are helping to facilitate (in my view)
the rise and development of terrorism.

It is a tendency in Western society, which is politically oriented, to assume

that there is a rational pragmatic cause for acts of terrorism, and a corresponding
belief that, if the particular political grievance is addressed properly, the
phenomenon will fade. However, when the roots of a terrorist movement are not
political (or economic), it is naïve to expect political gestures to change the hearts
of radicals. Attempts to deal with the terrorist threat as though it were divorced
from its intellectual, cultural, and religious wellsprings are doomed to failure.1 In
short, I would not argue that terrorism is purely a cultural phenomenon, but I take
as a theorem that modern terrorism has significant cultural aspects in its
objectives, causes, methods, and consequences.

All readers will agree with Martha Crenshaw’s observation that terrorism is
not justified by any group identification or affiliation: moral, cultural, religious, or

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ethnic. Still, it is obvious that culture underpins and influences terrorists’ thoughts
and actions, so it seems logical that terrorism is perceived differently and is used
differently by different cultures.

I will focus in particular on two main cultures, Islamic and Western Judeo-
Christian, because I think it is in the interface between these two that the so-
called “new terrorism” is flourishing. I will not argue here in favor of or against
Islam or Christianity as competing cultures and sets of values in relation to
terrorism, but I will try to offer an objective approach in order to better understand
and eventually bridge the gap be- tween the two cultures, a gap that, in my view,
could possibly be widened by the phenomenon of modern terrorism.

Perceptions of Terrorism in Different Cultures

After September 11, the historic cultural difference between the West and
the Muslim world re-emerged as one of the principal frontiers of cultural
suspicion. While terror- ism—even in the form of suicide attacks—is not by
definition an Islamic phenomenon, it cannot be ignored that the lion’s share of
terrorist acts, particularly the most devastating, in recent years have been
perpetrated in the name of Islam. This fact has sparked a fundamental debate
both in the West and within the Muslim world regarding the link between these
acts and the teachings of Islam.

Perceptions of Terrorism within Islamic Culture

Most Western analysts are hesitant to identify terrorist acts with the central
teachings of one of the world’s great religions, preferring to view them instead as
a perversion of a religion that is essentially peace-loving and tolerant. Moreover,
an interpretation that places the blame for terrorism on religious and cultural traits
runs the risk of being branded as bigoted and Islamo-phobic.

Muslims often accuse Western analysts of misinterpreting Islam and

ignorance about its real essence. But if these critics do not wish to see their
religion associated with contemporary terrorism, then they need to be reminded
that it is not “the others” who initially misunderstood and misjudged Islam, but
rather the terrorists themselves. They have sent scholars all over the world
looking everywhere—including in their religion—for explanations of their actions.
It is not the case that Islam itself is a danger, but we have the duty to investigate
any possible source of inspiration and motivation for terrorists, in order to try to
defeat the threats we currently face. Thus, I will investigate what Daniel Pipes
calls the “terroristic version of Islam.”

Terroristic Version of Islam

Martin Kramer, a research professor in Middle East affairs at Tel Aviv University,
has written that “Islamism” is Islam reformulated as a modern ideology. Whereas
Islam is traditionally viewed as being comparable to Judaism and Christianity,
Islamism is a response to ideologies that emerged in the modern West, such as
communism, socialism, or capitalism. It has a political agenda; it is an effort to
draw meaning out of Islam that can be applied to problems of contemporary
governance, society, and politics. We therefore may ask if there are any historic
similarities between Bin Laden, et al., and Martin Luther and the Reformation. In
his own eyes, Bin Laden may see himself as a profound reformer of Islam, just
as Luther was in the history of Christianity, but most scholars of Islam describe
Bin Laden’s vision as a highly distorted and retrograde version of the faith.

According to Daniel Pipes, militant Islamism derives from Islam but is a

misanthropic, misogynist, triumphalist, millenarian, anti-modern, anti-Christian,

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anti-Semitic, terrorist, jihadist, and suicidal version of it. Still, what I hope to
examine is not the political dimension of Islamism, but its cultural elements. To
Islamists, living by the sharia (religious law) is the key both to the moral life and
to the regeneration of the Muslim faith. The ideology of Islamism is given
coherence by its focus on this one element.

The basic sentiment expressed by contemporary Islamist terrorists was

also present in the Muslim Brotherhood, a political movement that started in
Egypt in 1928 with the goal of restoring Islamic laws and values in the face of
growing Western influence. At about the same time, another group of radical
brethren was taking shape in Saudi Arabia, advocating the puritanical
interpretation of Islam known as Wahhabism. The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt
and the Wahhabi radicals in Saudi Arabia both rose out of an Islamic religious
movement called the Salafiyya, which held that the practice of Islam had become
corrupted and needed to be reformed to reflect the original seventh-century form
of Islam practiced at the time of the Prophet Muhammad. This extreme
interpretation of Islam would eventually influence a new generation of violent
radical Muslim groups, including the Taliban, Al Qaeda and Egyptian Islamic
Jihad. Although all these trends and religious movements have been present for
almost a century, they never seemed to achieve the level of extremism and the
global reach that can be found in the language of today’s terrorists. This new
quality is due to the fact that terrorist discourse has evolved and exploited
religious concepts in order to advance their politi- cal and cultural agenda.

The message of terrorist organizations is not Koranic, but heretical. Four

main concepts are of interest for my approach.

• Dar al Islam/Dar al Harb. The underlying element in the radical Islamist

world- view is a-historic and dichotomist: perfection lies in the ways of the
Prophet and the events of his time; therefore, religious innovations,
philosophical relativism, and intellectual or political pluralism are
anathema. In such a worldview, there can exist only two camps—Dar al-
Islam (“The House of Islam,” i.e., the Muslim countries) and Dar al-Harb
(“The House of War,” i.e., countries ruled by any regime but Islam)—which
are pitted against each other until the final victory of Is- lam. The radical
Muslims carry these concepts to their extreme conclusion.
• Ummah. This is an ancient Arabic term that denotes the totality of Muslims
in the world at any given time; in this sense, it refers to much more than
our word religion usually comprehends. In Islamic terms, ummah means
what secular diplo- mats call the international community. The two terms
correspond in internal variety, geographical dispersion, and potentially
global ambition.
• The Great Caliphate calls for the replacement of all secular leadership
with religious leaders in any country having Muslim majorities. This would
include Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan, Indonesia, all the Emirates, Sudan,
Tunisia, Libya, Algeria, Morocco, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and
Jordan, and finally what Muslims call the “occupied territory” of Israel.
• • Jihad is such an important concept to Islam that it is almost regarded as
a sixth pillar. It is also the most misunderstood of all aspects of Islam.
Most Islamic scholars interpret jihad as a nonviolent quest for justice: a
holy struggle rather than a holy war. The word jihad, they argue, actually
means “striving” in the spiritual sense. It means that a Muslim’s real daily
striving is to become pure in spirit and to resist sin and evil. All of the
Koran’s chapters except one begin with the phrase “Allah is merciful and
compassionate.” So if Islam is such a compassionate and tolerant religion,
why then do the militant/extremist Islamists continue to resort to the use of
violence? Compassion and tolerance, after all, are not part of the common

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 Western perception of jihad, at least as it is used by terrorists. They are
interpreting jihad to mean a holy war, departing from the notion that a
Muslim’s duty is to keep up the struggle against the spiritual enemies of
Islam.

Today’s jihadis are calling their war the “Third Great Jihad,” and are doing so
within the framework of a time line that reaches back to the very creation of Islam
in the seventh century. This constitutes part of their attempts to recreate the
dynamics that gave rise to the religion in the first two hundred years of its
existence. Jihad represents the chance to overcome the shame of Islam’s long
decline from glory and superiority over the West into the decay and decadence
represented by current Arab governments.

All these concepts are illustrative for my discussion, simply to show how
things have changed. If, at the beginning, jihad was considered just a holy war in
the House of Islam, it then became a mobilizing concept justifying political
activities, and finally emerged as an efficient terrorist activity in its own right. Due
to these new interpretations of the teachings of Islam, we today have arrived at a
completely erroneous (in the Muslim view) perception of Islamic culture. Many
Muslim scholars say that Osama Bin Laden and other Islamic fundamentalists do
not represent the real Islam. If that is the case, then how can one distinguish
between the real Islam and the distortion of it?

Who does represent true Islam: “Will the real Islam please stand up?”

Islam represents an ethical, ideological, ideational, and cultural phenomenon. It

is both a belief system and a code of conduct based on a hierarchy of values,
norms, standards, laws, and institutions; it represents a way of life, a world
system, and a social movement for historical change. Still, there is a tendency to
not judge Islam by its books, but by what is done in its name. The problem is that
Islamism has, in some respects, become more visible than the real Islam.

Why is it that the Islamist message seems unitary, while the perception of
Islam is so diverse, even among Muslims themselves? Within Islam, the unifying
influence of faith (insofar as Sunni and Shia can be said to be united) is
outweighed by other societal differences. Even within the Arab world, where a
more or less common language (to a significant extent), common culture and
historical experience are added to shared religion, there is no immediate
likelihood of unity. In addition, most Muslim violence is directed against co-
religionists. So Muslims are not united, a fact that some observers attribute to the
teachings of Islam itself, arguing that they make Muslims confrontational. How
does the Muslim world perceive terrorism? Does the Muslim community see it
and feel it the way we do? Saddam Hussein was the only state leader to praise
the attacks of September 11. Many Muslim-majority countries are members of
the U.S.-led coalition fighting terrorism. Moreover, Al Qaeda also targets Muslim
governments, such as those in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, that it sees as godless.
Still, do the populations of those nations really support the coalition against Bin
Laden and its member states? Talking with people from Muslim communities,
they shared with me their view on that specific issue: maybe the political leaders
are in favor of supporting the Americans in the war against terrorism, for political
and strategic reasons, but the ordinary people are not. What is more, there are
Muslims who morally support the terrorists, and think their war is right. One
confusing problem is that one may find this trend even among Europe’s fifteen
million Muslims. To take but one example, in the UK, a recent poll has shown
that 13 percent of British Muslims surveyed would “regard further at- tacks by Al
Qaeda or similar organizations on the U.S. as justified.” We may also remember
that the attacks of September 11 were popular on Arab streets, where they were

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met with spontaneous celebrations and reportedly made Osama a popular name
for newborn boys.

To what extent is the Islamic world the target of terrorism? Some authors
say that the war being waged by Bin Laden and his followers is as much against
Islam as it is against the West. Al Qaeda and its allies represent a perversion of
Islam, and are en- gaged in a campaign to change Islam itself. This analysis is
borne out by terrorist at- tacks in Central Asia and Morocco, in Saudi Arabia,
Algeria—and some in Iraq—that have been directed against fellow Muslims, who
have abandoned what the extremists view as “true Islam.” Still, the primary
targets of today’s terrorists remain modernity, Christianity, America, and the
West, which in the Islamist perspective make up a single unholy stew.

Now we will shift to the other side of the equation. Why is Western culture
perceived in this way by the Muslim world? How “alien” is Western culture from
Islamic culture?

Perceptions of Terrorism in Western Judeo-Christian Culture

The West is no longer a mere geographic proposition; it has also taken on

cultural and civilizational dimensions. It obviously differs from all other
civilizations in that it has had an overwhelming impact on all other civilizations in
the world that have existed since 1500. The West’s popular culture is global in its
reach, but in many parts of the world it is widely regarded with suspicion, and met
with varying degrees of resistance. Within the Islamic world, the West has been
stereotyped as the embodiment of arrogance, exploitation and irresponsible
individualism.

A first distinction between Islam and Christianity occurs with regard to the
place and role of religion within society. Many of the cultural features of Western
societies are the result of the “privatization of religion” in the Christian world. The
modern form of governance, democracy, is about privatization, and thus
everything in Western societies—including religion—became a private issue.
Indeed, religion in Western societies is largely restricted to the private sphere. It
is substantially independent from government, and its role is reduced to the
private life of each individual.

Islam, on the other hand, is a pervasive religion. It regulates every aspect

of human life. Western culture is completely different. It gives first priority to the
human individual. Societies that are structured around the pursuit of religious
objectives can appear illogical to societies like ours, based as they are on
individual rights and freedom. But the values that are prized by these societies
are completely different. One observant Muslim told me once, “My country is
above myself and above my family. My country is my religion.” Individual freedom
is not their main concern – they care most about their fellow Muslims and their
countries. Westerners cannot comprehend how “rational” people can “joyously”
destroy their lives and the lives of innocent civilians in America and Israel and
elsewhere in the world. They do not understand the psychology that drives
suicide bombers to their deaths in order to bring honor and paradise to them,
their families, and Muslims everywhere. We cannot conceive of a culture that
encourages young people to slaughter themselves for the perceived benefits of
the afterlife. These concepts are totally alien to Western thinking.

On the other hand, Western values such as individualism, liberalism,

human rights, equality, liberty, democracy, free markets, and separation of
church and state often have little or no resonance in Islamic culture. Western
efforts to propagate these values produce instead a reaction against “human
rights imperialism” and a reaffirmation of indigenous values.

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 Is Christianity as such a target of terrorism? Modern terrorism is religious
only in means, not in its targets. What we see is that terrorists are targeting
values, rather than religion.

Terrorists are not fighting against the Christianity as a religion, but rather
against the products of Christian culture, which are Western values.

If this is the case, then it might be asked exactly in what way Western
culture challenges Islamist terrorists. This question bring me to the next point of
my analysis, where I hope to shed light on what is cultural about contemporary
terrorism, and from what perspective can we define terrorism as a cultural
phenomenon. As I said in the introduction, I consider twenty-first-century
terrorism to have cultural objectives, causes, means, and consequences.

What Are the Cultural Aspects of Contemporary Terrorism?

First of all, I consider the terrorist agenda to be at times primarily social and
cultural, not political. Among the cultural objectives terrorists have on their
agenda, I would in- clude:

1. Reject and destroy Western culture. Today’s terrorists are seeking the
elimination of Western secularism and values, and of those who support
them. In the eyes of Islamic fundamentalists, the openness of Western
culture and its values are repulsive. There are numerous books and
articles that point to this antipathy toward the Western world, either
because of a broad cultural incompatibility or a specific conflict between
Western consumerism and religious fundamentalism. Western values are
seen as contaminating Islam, and therefore there is a perceived cultural
duty to fight against this influence. Terrorists want to insulate their
societies from penetration or “corruption” by the West.
2. Defeat globalization. Associated with Western values is the process of
globalization. Globalization is what terrorists dislike most, and this is
because globalization is not only about exporting and importing prosperity,
but also values. Pope John Paul II suggested what these values might be
in an address earlier this year in which he spoke of globalization as not
just an economic fact, but a “cultural phenomenon” as well: “Those who
are subjected to it often see globalization as a destructive flood
threatening the social norms which had protected them and the cultural
points of reference which had given them direction in life. Globalization is
moving too quickly for cultures to respond.”16 Fear and rage in the face of
threats to established beliefs and ways of life—threats seen as originating
above all in America’s liberal, consumerist culture—are a large part of the
dynamic driving Islamist fury today.
3. Fighting the infidels, unifying the ummah. This new form of terrorism is
more in- tent on punishment for perceived wrongs, destruction of the
existing order, the quest to create Islamic states by the imposition of the
sharia law. Today’s militant form of Islam seeks to rid the Middle East of
all Western influence and establish an Islamic state. Fundamentalists
believe that violence, including killing civilians, is justified as a means to
restore sharia and maintain Islamic cultural identity. And Islamists not only
want to preserve their identity, but also to either convert or punish
nonbelievers.
4. Targeting societies becomes a terrorist objective. What appears to be
emerging today is a desired goal to devastate an entire society, not simply
to politically influence an audience. If traditionally the objective of
terrorists’ political violence was to influence government structures or
states, the new form of terrorism is oriented toward the society that they
want to change: the society itself has be- come the main target.
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 There is also a cultural motivation behind contemporary terrorism.
Terrorists are fighting their war because of a religious commandment. September
11 occurred be- cause of a religious commandment to wage jihad and work
toward the establishment of sharia. Terrorism therefore became a culture that
gave the poor and the hopeless a ba- sis for self-worth: to fight for their faith.

Islamist terrorists are also fighting out of a sense of cultural frustration.

The cultural anger against the West is quite explicit, and is clearly invoked as a
motivation for terrorist acts. Their hate is not limited in time and space. Once
asked what the jihadis will do if U.S. forces finally pull out of Iraq, one terrorist
said: “We will follow them to the U.S.” Their level of frustration is high because
they are looking at the past. As Francis Fukuyama wrote, the days of Islam’s
cultural conquests are over, and fundamentalists cannot accept it.

Terrorists also exploit globalization in order to justify their activities.

Kashima re- verses the role of globalization in modern terrorism, from a violent
intrusion that provokes terroristic opposition, to a neutral medium that terrorists
use to advance their violent agendas. He claims that globalization offers an
opportunity for terrorists to gain publicity for their political agenda, to place it on
the “communal common ground of the people who engage in public discourse”
about it. As Carl Ratner has written, “Globalization makes terrorism an ‘attractive’
political strategy for some.”

Terrorism is also cultural in its approaches and means; the first such
instrument that comes to mind is the religion of Islam itself. One question
therefore arises: Is religion a weapon of terrorists? Some analysts agree that,
although some terrorist organizations may have a religious and political face,
they have built their strength on terrorist tactics, which have nothing in common
with religion.

I disagree with this perspective. I think that the believers—the human

capital of terrorist organizations—are the main weapons of terrorism, and
therefore I would argue that religion becomes an organizing principle, a
mobilizing factor, and therefore can be seen as a weapon of terrorists. By
appealing to deeply ingrained religious beliefs, radical leaders succeed in
motivating the Islamist terrorist, creating for him a social environment that
provides approbation and a religious environment that provides moral and legal
support for his actions.

Terrorists are also using religious ideological centers to teach extremism,

which raises the question of whether these madrasas are centers of education or
nurseries of terrorism. It is well known that religious indoctrination is a pre-
condition for creating good militants. It can be safely assumed that the great
majority of Muslims in the world have no desire to join a jihad or to politicize their
religion. However, it is also true that, insofar as religious establishments in most
of the Arabian Peninsula, in Iran, and in much of Egypt and North Africa are
concerned, radical Islamist ideology does not represent a marginal and extremist
perversion of Islam but rather a genuine and increasingly mainstream
interpretation. Many religious schools in these countries impart only religious
education (along with a minimal level of general education, which tends to
produce semiliterate religious scholars). They promote negative thinking and
propagate hatred and violence in society.

We may also see today the global means of the new forms of terrorism.
Because of globalization, terrorists have access to more powerful technologies,
more targets, more territory, more means of recruitment, more financial

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resources, and more easily exploited sources of rage than ever before. This new
terrorism is using global and modern means to achieve its ends. Extremist
ideologies are spread through websites and videotapes, and the use of
information technologies such as the Internet, mobile phones, and instant
messaging has extended the global reach of many terrorist groups.

Along with the material results of terrorist attacks, we are at present also
confronting the cultural consequences of terrorism, such as:

1. Negative impact on Western societies. Although terrorism is generally

unsuccessful in reaching its political objectives, it often does succeed at
the tactical and strategic levels, instilling fear and confusion and impacting
societies by causing tremendous physical destruction and grave bodily
harm. It is an interesting situation: contemporary terrorists have society as
a whole as a target, because in democracies the individual and society
both play a very important role within the state, as well as on the
international scene. It is no longer effective to simply kid- nap people or kill
political representatives. When the society as a whole is the target, the
efficacy of terrorist activity is by far enhanced. The impact of terror- ism on
Western societies becomes therefore very important. A terrorist attack
such as the one of September 11 may have profound political, social, and
economic consequences for the targeted society. It can inspire
widespread anxiety, anger at the government for failing in its primary
mission of providing security, and popular demand for draconian
measures that could shake a political system and fundamentally alter the
society’s lifestyle.
2. Terrorism as an “intellectual fashion.” What we also see today is that
subcultural elements crop up in contemporary intellectual fashion, along
with extremist policies. Terrorists are becoming popular, and this is not
only among the illiterate. We witness today an “intellectual attraction” to
terrorism, to the use of intellectual means of propaganda, and therefore to
a certain level of attention being paid to the “intellectual nature” of the new
terrorists. This is a dangerous trend as, over the long term, the
popularization of extremist views cannot augur well for the security of any
state or society. This kind of “intellectual terrorism” can be worse than
physical terrorism.
3. Copy-cat influence on other types of terrorism. All types of terrorism are
profoundly influenced by the form of terrorism we currently face. For
instance, the influence of Al Qaeda on Muslim separatist groups active in
their home countries is growing. It is a worrying trend, as each Al Qaeda
attack becomes a recruiting poster for terrorism in general, no matter the
specific type.
4. Clash of ideologies/cultures/civilizations. One of the main consequences
of modern terrorism is the controversial “clash of civilizations” that Samuel
Huntington suggested in 1993. The essence of this thesis is that the great
divisions among humankind and the dominant source of conflict in the
future will be cultural. Religion discriminates sharply and exclusively
between people, and the main cultural fault line in the world occurs where
the West meets Islam. Were the September 11 attacks, from a
Huntingtonian perspective, part of a clash between Islamic and Western
civilizations? Bin Laden and his terror network see it that way. Al Qaeda
considers its terrorist campaign against the U.S. to be part of a war
between the ummah and the Judeo-Christian West. For Al Qaeda, the
fight is against Western civilization as a whole. Islamic scholars say that it
is a fight be- tween the vast majority of progressive Muslims and the
miniscule percentage of radical Muslims. According to Rohan Gunaratna,

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 it is not a clash of civilizations but a clash among civilizations, a fight that
must essentially be fought within the Muslim world.

Many experts say that the new form of terrorism cannot be reduced to a
clash of civilizations. Still, we see a continuously growing gap between Islam and
Western civilization. Anti-Western feelings openly manifested in the Muslim world
are generating an increase in Western hostility towards Islam in general. Western
societies, the main victims of contemporary terrorism, are exposed to the danger
of an increasingly hateful attitude toward Muslim communities. If you go in the
streets in Western countries and ask ordinary people what they feel about
Muslims, they will make—even if not deliberately—an association between the
current threat to their security and the Muslim world. The more terrorist attacks
take place, the greater the anti-Muslim resentment on the part of the targeted
populations.

Having in mind all these cultural aspects of terrorism, it is logical to

consider how terrorism might be fought using cultural means. What is the role of
culture in the fight against terrorism?

Cultural Approaches to Fighting Terrorism

It has been assumed that understanding terrorism crucially affects the responses
to it. Therefore, in order to comprehend the motivation for these acts and to draw
up an effective strategy for a war against terrorism, it is necessary to understand
the religious- ideological factors that underlie it, and which are deeply embedded
in Islam. Consequently, counter-terrorism begins on the religious-ideological
level, and must adopt appropriate methods. The cultural and religious sources of
radical Islamic ideology must be addressed in order to develop a long-range
strategy for coping with the terrorist threat to which they give birth.

To this end, I suggest there is an urgent need for a more effective,

meaningful, and all-embracing dialogue between the Muslim and the Western
worlds in order to bring about a better understanding of each other’s interests
and aspirations. Therefore, the Muslim world must take the course of openly
learning from the West and confining the role of religion to the private sphere. A
reformist movement in Islam is required, an interpretation of Islam that combines
a proper respect for Muslim traditions with a willingness to embrace the
opportunities and obligations for development offered by the modern world.

There is a need for an Islamic Reformation, to allow modernization to take

place; as Rohan Gunaratna has pointed out, this is a battle within Islam itself,
rather than be- tween Islam and the West. I think that progress has been made
already in this direction, by bringing the subject of Islam into the public debate
within the Muslim world itself.

Another effective approach would be to engage Islam—and therefore

theology should become a topic in international diplomacy—not as a security
issue, but as tool to better understand each other. Because of the secularization
of the state in the West, Western governments when dealing with one another do
not expect to be required to deal with one another’s religious leaders. It is
different in the case of the Muslim world, where religious leaders typically have a
far greater influence on the public than civilian leaders do. So theology should
become of interest for makers of policy and diplomacy.

Promoting moderate Islam should be another approach taken by the

West. The best way of managing the fundamentalist challenge is to initiate a
serious dialogue with moderate Islamic groups that may foster in the long term, if

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not the democratization of their regimes, at least a marginalization of their radical
elements. Moderates must win in the struggle within Islam. Every precaution
should be taken not to antagonize moderate elements in the Muslim community,
and therefore it is important to know if it is power or weakness that moderates
Muslims, and act accordingly.

Integrating Islam within the Western community is also important. Gert

Weisskirchen, the foreign policy spokesman for Germany’s Social Democrats,
spoke about the need to Europeanize Islam. But is it possible for Europe to
Europeanize Islam, or for America to Americanize Islam?

Some argue that, in the years ahead, it should be the voice of Western
Muslim communities that should be heard rather than that of Bin Laden. Western
Muslim communities can make a difference, due to their connections to and
understanding of Islamic culture. These communities can serve as a link between
the Islamic and Western worlds. Still, it has been shown that many terrorists
belong to these communities. Expatriate and refugee communities remain
vulnerable to ideological penetration and recruitment, and they still identify
themselves with the struggles in their homelands. Until and unless host
governments develop a better cultural understanding of the threat and target
terrorist propaganda—both its producers and their tools—the threat from within
will persist.

A crucial element of the cultural front in the fight against terrorism is

reforming the education system in the Muslim world. Extremists primarily come
from societies where there is a high level of extremist teaching. Social change
must be encouraged and promoted, with an emphasis on education. There are
serious problems caused by the religious schools. Terrorists make use of these
schools to disseminate ideologies that are contrary to the teachings of Islam. It is
not religion that is taught there, but politics: the politics of hatred.

When asked which is the best measure of whether you are winning or
losing a war on terrorism, the U.S. Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, said
that the best way is “to monitor whether the numbers we are killing and deterring
are greater than the numbers the Madrasas are producing and Al-Qaeda is
recruiting.” Here stands the difference between two approaches: “hard,” or
military power, used by Westerners to defeat terrorism, and “soft,” or cultural
power, used by terrorists to win. This has to change. In the same way that
terrorists are using now more and more hard power, those fighting them should
focus on soft power. Joseph Nye, one of America’s leading thinkers on foreign
policy, has advocated for the use of soft power in order to improve America’s
image in the Middle East. He argues that the spread of information and American
popular culture has generally increased global awareness and openness to
American ideas and values.

Soft power worked with Communist Europe because of a common history,

a shared religious heritage, and a similar cultural framework. But in the Middle
East, there is a great disparity on all of these issues. Can efforts based in soft
power really take root in Muslim societies? It is more difficult to wield soft power
where there are deep cultural differences. For instance, it is almost impossible to
think that Western values could be spread among the radical Islamists who abhor
democracy, who believe that human rights and tolerance are imperialist
inventions, and who want to have nothing to do with deeper Western values
which are not those of the Koran as they interpret it. But the target of soft power
should, again, be the large Muslim communities that are not yet radicalized, and
the uneducated masses. In this regard, illiteracy is another important aspect to
be dealt with. Destitute and illiterate young people, in my view, are the easiest

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target for recruitment by terrorist organizations, because they are the easiest to
manipulate.

Conclusion

To conclude, a cultural approach to terrorism may not offer any concrete solution
to it, but it definitely can provide us with a far more insightful and effective
strategy to understand the concrete cultural issues involved in terrorism.
Comprehending both the conditions that provoke terrorism as well as the
ideological and cultural objectives that guide the terroristic response to these
conditions will make us better prepared to under- stand the reasons for terrorism
and to fight against it.

As it seems that there is no purely political or military solution to terrorism,

it is reasonable to try to approach it differently. Nobody wants to antagonize the
Muslim community. The United States has avoided portraying its campaign
against Al Qaeda and the Taliban as a crusade against Islam, and it is not my
intent to make Islam into a security issue either. Instead, I agree with those
analysts who describe the enemy as an ideology, a set of attitudes, a belief
system organized into a recruiting network that will continue to replace terrorist
losses unless defeated politically, economically, and culturally. Therefore, if
states do not have policies towards religions, they do respond to ideologies, so it
is important to develop hard power solutions in relation to Islamism and soft
power approaches to Islam. Hard power is needed to eliminate the Islamist
threat, while soft power is needed to attract the moderates, appease militant
Islamists, and to promote a true alternative to Bin Laden in the world where he
originated.

Islamic fundamentalism is a threat to Western culture, in the same way

that Western culture is perceived as a threat to the Islamic world. It is always
about misperceptions, misunderstandings, and ignorance about each other. But
when people of one culture perceive those of another not just as alien but also as
threatening, serious conflict is likely.

I don’t know if it is a clash of civilizations that we are facing today, but I do

realize that there is a gap between the Muslim and the Western world, and I do
think that terrorism increases that gap. This chasm needs to be narrowed, and
cultural means may contribute to the effort. Without being blind to the dangers of
militant fundamentalism, we must remain aware of the moral distinction between
discrete religious sects like Wahhabis and terrorist groups like Al Qaeda and
Islamic Jihad.

By continuing to maintain that moral bright line between terrorism and

Islam, we help to legitimate all the varied and peaceful traditions of Islam,
including those that oppose fundamentalism. This permits us to precisely isolate
and destroy terrorists, while working on a multifaceted program to blunt and
reduce militant fundamentalism within Islam. Understanding the diversity of Islam
gives those of us who are not Muslim a valuable tool to facilitate our dealings
with Muslims, and is therefore a step that is much too important to ignore or
deny.

To conclude, viewing terrorism purely as a cultural phenomenon would be

too extreme. Indeed, contemporary terrorism has cultural features, and may be
taken as a cultural phenomenon, but the point is that, so far, the terrorism of the
twenty-first century is the manifestation of only an isolated part of a culture, not of
the whole. Just simply associating the two words seems inadequate to me. This
is because I don’t want to conflate a positive word with a complete negative one.
Still, as we have seen, they meet somewhere. Therefore, I would argue that the

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form of terrorism we are facing to- day is rather a non-cultural, sub-cultural, or an
a-cultural phenomenon. And, indeed, this sub-cultural phenomenon could well
nourish “a clash of civilizations.”

Source:
Serafim, A. (2005). Terrorism—A Cultural Phenomenon? Connections, 4(1), 61-
74. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/26323155

Submitted by:

JONATHAN LUKE T. MALLARI

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