The Culture Beat

England is a long way from East Tennessee, but it’s close enough that the local Muslim community felt compelled to issue a statement after the transit bombings in London last week.

“We condemned the violence as quickly as possible,” community leader Taneem Aziz said this week. There is no way to justify the violence from an Islamic standpoint, he added. Extremist leaders like Osama bin Laden stir up followers by bending isolated scriptural passages to their purposes.

“You can make any holy text look like a terrorist manual,” Aziz said. “There’s always the possibility of taking the text and twisting it. What is there in the Bible that would justify the Crusades? Why would some Buddhists be terrorists or communists?”

Beyond the loss of life – as of Friday, the death toll stood at 54 – it’s hard to sort out the most disturbing facts about the bombings.

British people are deeply distressed that three of the four bombers were home-grown, born and reared in England. The fourth was born in Jamaica, not exactly a hotbed of Islamic fundamentalism. From a strictly practical standpoint, this means it will be almost impossible to identify, much less track, possible terrorists who leave or enter a country. Deportation before an attack isn’t an option.

Many people are no doubt more bothered by how national and community loyalties evaporated in the face of religious fervor. At least two of the bombers had no previous political interest, and yet they were turned into suicide bombers through radical religious rhetoric. Queen and country were no match for fanatical appeals to Allah.

Another troubling part of the story is the specific targets of the attacks. London is one of the most diverse, immigrant-rich cities in the world, and any attack was almost certain to touch all sorts of people, not just stereotypical white Christians (a profile becoming less representative every year).

But last week, Muslims actually aimed at Muslims. As columnist Johann Hari wrote in The Independent, a national British newspaper, the day after the attacks, “Anybody who tells you these bombers are fighting for the rights of Muslims in Iraq, occupied Palestine or Chechnya should look at the places they chose to bomb. Aldgate? The poorest and most Muslim part of the country. Edgware Road? The centre of Muslim and Arab life in London and, arguably, Europe.”

As if we needed any more horrible evidence of a trend, a few days ago suicide bombers killed 27 people on a street in Baghdad. Most of the victims were children – children! – who had gathered around some American troops handing out candy.

There’s no comfort in knowing that terrorists will aim at anyone – at those with whom they might have prayed on another day, at children.
This isn’t “a fight between Muslims and the rest of us,” Hari concluded. “The Bin Ladenists who planned these massacres despise democratic, non-violent Muslims who choose to live in the West as much as they despise the rest of us.”

Nor does Aziz see these attacks as essentially between religions. He believes they are more about the politics of the region.

“It’s not so much about a war between the West and Islam,” he said. “I don’t see religious writing on it.”

Even so, he knows religious issues lay close to the center of the story.

“Killing innocent people is abhorrent to Islam,” he said several times. “Why are these groups doing what they are doing?”

Aziz believes Muslims in the West – in the United States and Western Europe – must find answers.

“It’s a vicious circle right now,” Aziz said. “What is happening in the world politically (particularly in Iraq) … creates an atmosphere where these fringe elements get more recruits. Yet the onus is on us as Muslims to watch out for that kind of thing in our midst.”

From Face to Faith. Published July 16, 2005, in the Johnson City (Tenn.) Press.