CrossCurrents

CrossCurrents A Catholic Reflects on Faith in Our Times

Bernard F. Swain, Ph.D.

Home-Grown Terror

Maybe now, in the wake of the London bombings, people will realize that President Bush had it right the first time.

After 9/11 he announced his intention to launch a “Crusade” against anyone responsible for terror attacks against the West. Soon after, Bush retracted the word “Crusade” as politically incorrect–but it was the right word all along. The U.S. has launched a crusade to counter the “Jihad” of Islamist extremists, and the London bombings, like the daily carnage in Iraq, are only a natural and inevitable outcome of such a crusade.

At first, of course, everyone assumed the London bombers were alien invaders who had somehow evaded Britain’s security network to enter the country and launch an attack. But it now appears they were British subjects, and at least some of them were native-born.

The suspects behind the London attacks included a “good bloke” from Leeds who was known to his neighbors for his gentle way with the special needs kids he taught. Another suspect is a Jamaican-born convert to Islam whose grandfather and mother live in my own Boston neighborhood of Dorchester, and are appalled to think their offspring might be involved.

This makes it clear that terror is not the work of distant, head-wrapped renegades holding out in remote, mountainous regions of far-off foreign lands.

Terror is the work of fanatics, of people who believe their cause is so holy it justifies any tactic used to promote it, people whose conviction about that cause is so intense they will actually carry out any tactic heedless of the consequences. “In the name of faith you hate,” the judge told confessed abortion clinic bomber Eric Rudolph as she gave him two life sentences. His prosecutor got it right: “Make no mistake: Eric Rudolph is an American terrorist.”

Terrorists can live anywhere, live ordinary lives, appear harmless to neighbors and family alike. All that separates them from others is their fanatical faith. In past years, it was often faith in Stalin or Hitler or Mao. Today, it is faith in fundamentalism.

In other words, the terror we face really is a “Jihad,” a holy war. So it’s only natural to respond with a “Crusade”–a holy war of our own. After all, the Christian West invented crusade in its mission to liberate the Holy Land from “the infidel.” Anyone foolish enough to give us a taste of our own medicine should not be surprised if we respond in kind.

The trouble is the natural response doesn’t work. Two wrongs don’t make a right, and two holy wars do not end holy war –they just fuel more of the same.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair has already acknowledged the threat posed by “extremist clerics” whose preaching, based on controversial interpretations of the Koran and other Islamic texts, leads them to incite their congregations to “Jihad” and terror tactics like suicide bombing. Meanwhile, a U.S. court has just sentenced a Virginia-born Muslim preacher to life in prison for “inciting violence.”

Why are such preachers such a threat? The answer is neither new nor surprising. For centuries, Christian clerics incited the crusaders to leave home, family, and safety for years to fight in far-off battles for the promise of fortune, glory, and the forgiveness of all sins.

Modern terrorism in Europe dates from “The Troubles” that began in northern Ireland in 1969 and made London’s streets and public transport favorite terror targets long before the latest bombings. Those “Troubles” were provoked by preachers like Ian Paisley, who invoked Christian scriptures and beliefs to justify violence against innocents.

You see, “holy war” by any label is different from other kinds of war in two ways. First, the warriors fight with the conviction that their cause is not merely right, but even righteous. Second, such warriors are prone to unique morale blindness, since they are easily convinced that the righteousness of their cause covers all sins they might commit in battle, including the murder of innocents and suicide itself.

In other words, terror’s real threat is not the warriors themselves, but their mindset. Anyone carrying such fanatical convictions inside becomes a danger to everyone. They can “weaponize” any object (a shoe, a box cutter, a car, a child), and they are prepared to attack anyone, anywhere.

It is natural to respond to such a threat by trying to kill all such warriors. But the sad truth is: as long as the mindset that drove them persists, new warriors will arise in their place. Iraq is the perfect example. American intelligence officials now tell us the US Iraq invasion has given birth to a “new generation” of terrorists determined to defend their fellow Muslims from “crusaders” and “infidels.”

To say we must fight them in Baghdad so we don’t have to fight them in Boston implies there is a finite number of people, and if you pen them up in Iraq you can kill them all. The truth is we increased the pool by what we did in Iraq.

Peter Bergen,

Terrorism Specialist,

New American Foundation

Simply put, it is impossible to stop them all unless we stop the mindset itself. As long as fanatical leaders preach terror, their indoctrinated fanatical followers will terrorize us.

This means that terrorism is not fundamentally a military or political phenomenon. It is rather, a spiritual phenomenon, an inner infection spread by malignant perversions of religious faith. That religion may be Christian, Islamic, or anything else – no matter, because once perverted into fanaticism, any religion can mobilize crusaders for terror.

The Catholic Church once preached “crusade,” and its warriors committed unspeakable crimes. But Catholicism has long since abandoned any attempt to justify holy war. The Catholic “just war” tradition explicitly prohibits attacks on innocents and other immoral tactics, even when waging war for a just cause. No matter how noble and moral we believe our cause to be, Catholic faith rejects the idea that the end justifies the means.

So tactics like preemptive strikes, vigilante justice, bombing of urban populations, torture of prisoners, and suspension of civil and human rights– all part of our crusade against “Jihad”– can never be justified. This explains the worldwide opposition of Catholic bishops to the invasion of Iraq.

Of course, the real aim of today’s “Jihad” is not military victory anyhow. Like all terrorists before them, today’s attackers seek to undermine the moral values that keep our society powerful by provoking us to draconian and immoral measures.

So far, their track record since 9/11 shows two things. First, they are still capable of attack, whether in Spain, or northern Africa, or Iraq, or Britain, or elsewhere. Second, they have already forced us into reckless invasions and illegal and morally dubious practices, and even to the massive killing of innocents camouflaged as “collateral damage.”

In other words, they are accomplishing their objectives. Their gains are not measured by the number of attacks or victims, but by the moral concessions they force upon us. With every unethical step we take, we grant them another victory.

Yes, our “war on terror” really does deserve President Bush’s first label, “Crusade,” because that’s just what it is –one holy war in pitched battle against another. But since Christians long ago learned the historical lesson that crusades never bring peace, Bush’s label merely supplies the most accurate name for a strategy that is as wrongful as it is wrong-headed.

Send Your Comments and Questions to bfswain@juno.com