Terrorism and Intellectual Freedom

Daniel Pipes provides an excellent brief explanation of the intellectual roots of Islamist terrorism:

Alas, this view ignored a third totalitarianism, growing since the 1920s, that of Islamism, most briefly defined as the belief that whatever the question, from child-rearing to war-making, "Islam is the solution." As the result of several factors – an historic rivalry with Jews and Christians, a boisterous birth rate, the capture of the Iranian state in 1979, support from oil-rich states – Islamists have come to dominate the ideological discourse of Muslims interested in their Islamic identity or faith.

Islamic law, in retreat over the previous two centuries, came roaring back, and with it jihad, or sacred war. The caliphate, defunct in real terms for over a millennium, became a vibrant dream. Ideas proffered by such thinkers and organizers as Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, Shah Waliullah, Sayyid Abu'l-A'la al-Mawdudi, Hasan al-Banna, Sayyid Qutb, and Rouhollah Khomeini aggressed successfully against traditional, modernist, and centrist approaches to Islam. To advance the poisoned vision of these utopians, their followers adopted violent means, including terrorism.


To win the struggle with radical Islamism, Pipes notes that it is necessary to enable moderate and reformist Muslims to offer an alternative to the totalitarian vision of the Islamists:

The most effective form of counterterrorism fights not the terrorists but the ideas that motivate them. This strategy involves two main steps. First, defeat the Islamist movement just as the fascist and communist movements were defeated – on every level and in every way, making use of every institution, public and private. This task falls mainly on non-Muslims, Muslim communities being generally incapable or unwilling to purge their own.

In contrast, only Muslims can undertake the second step, the formulation and spread of an Islam that is modern, moderate, democratic, liberal, good-neighborly, humane, and respectful of women. Here, non-Muslims can help by distancing themselves from Islamists and supporting moderate Muslims.


This is exactly what needs to be done. The problem, unfortunately, lies in how the Islamists have used violence and intimidation to suppress reformist voices within Islam. Mr. Pipes has ably documented this in his own research. This is why fostering intellectual freedom in the Islamic world is both difficult and essential. We in the West must do everything possible to prevent Islamists from censoring moderate Muslims if we are to defeat Jihadist terrorism and the ideas that sustain it.