Pushing Past Terror to Understanding

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Chane: From a Christian perspective, what it means for me is to be very, very clear about speaking out publicly and with great voice, in response to those persons who claim to be Christians and who identify themselves as Christian leaders, who use that pulpit to articulate a theology that is condemning of Islam, and which continues to portray Islam as a religion of terror. I don't think, since 9/11 and to this day, we have found a consensus in the Christian community that speaks out very loudly when people within our own religious community identify terrorism with Islam.

Akbar Ahmed: I want to put on record for your readers that Bishop John Chane did something quite unprecedented in the annals of religious interaction-even by the standards of the British, who have been very active in interfaith dialogue. On February 20, he had an evensong service dedicated in honor of a Muslim scholar-I was the honored scholar. It was one of the most moving experiences of my life. A message of friendship, understanding, and compassion was sent out. It was an incredible ceremony with people who were so moved they had tears in their eyes. About 700 people turned up. Our friend Senior Rabbi Bruce Lustig [of the Washington Hebrew Congregation] was also there, and the three of us spoke from the pulpit. And that really shifted the theological ground of this whole debate [over tolerance]. We were in our own traditions and cultures, with our own religious integrity intact, and yet we were interpreting our own traditions to reach out to each other in peace, understanding, and friendship.

Judea Pearl: I don't know if I can represent the Jewish religion on that. Allow me to present my common sense instead; I hope they will coincide. Let me react to concatenating the words "Islamic terrorist." The phrase has been used a lot, and has been criticized a lot. Let me take the position here that it is not as ill-intended as it sounds.

Why? When people hear about any crime, the first reaction of the audience is to seek motivation. If there is a bombing, even a hold-up, one wants to know if it is for money, out of jealousy, or whatever. It's the first, natural interest of the audience. So if we have an act of terror, people want to know whether it was political, religious, or some other ground. And when you say "Islamic terrorist," one conveys the information that here are people who, by their own admission, were motivated by religious forces to do what they did. And audiences are interested in that. Law enforcement authorities are also interested in it, because if they are dealing with that kind of motivation, it requires a different kind of reaction than dealing with [a crime motivated by] family dispute.

It's very natural to say "Islamic terrorist." Actually, it should perhaps be "fanatic terrorist," or something like that. But the motivation ought to be conveyed, and it's very natural that we allow the motivation to be part of the description in the context of the news.

In reacting to the word "evil," my friend Akbar knows that my mantra for the past three years [since the kidnapping and murder of Judea Pearl's son, Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, by terrorists in Karachi, Pakistan] has been that all the condemnations that we have heard from Muslim leaders [against terrorism and violence in the name of Islam] have been cast in secular vocabulary. And it's very clear that they mean nothing to the perpetrators or to the people who sent them. They do not understand the logic of secular language or the logic of rational reasoning. They are motivated, by their own admission, by religious metaphors. And therefore, condemnations need to be cast in religious terminology.

So for the past three years, in various outlets, I have been calling on Muslim leaders to condemn terrorist acts in Muslim-certified vocabulary. And they do have these instruments: fatwah, takfir [denying the basic principles of the faith], fasad [corruption, permitting that which forbidden or forbidding that which is required by God], heresy, apostasy-and we haven't heard that. With one exception. It happened on March 13, 2005, when the Muslim council of Spain issued a fatwah against Bin Laden. And it generated some vibrations in the grand mosques of Egypt and the Middle East, but not what one would expect.

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