Today’s militant Islamists violate the traditional rules of Islam to maximize their violence. Because their motivation comes from politics in the first place, not religion
Mustafa Akyol
Wednesday's bloody shootout at the American Consulate in Istanbul is still not totally solved. No organization claimed the attack, which left three Turkish policemen dead and two injured. But the evidence collected by the Turkish security forces so far makes it reasonable to assume that there was an Islamist motive in the mind of the attackers. Actually three of them died right on the spot, and the fourth one turned out to be a paid driver. So there is no interrogation-based information. But the police found out that one of the dead terrorists had traveled to Iran and Afghanistan. The other's father was arrested in 1999 for links with the shadowy “Turkish Hizbollah,” a Kurdish Islamist terror group. The general impression in the Turkish media is that the attackers were at least ideologically linked with al Qaeda. So, this seems to be a case of “Islamist terror.”
But is that an appropriate term at all?
Islamic versus Islamist:
I think, yes, it is. What I would object to would be an apparently similar but actually quite unalike term: “Islamic terrorism.” The difference between “Islamic” and “Islamist” is crucial, because while one refers to a religion, the other refers to an ideology. While Islam teaches the path to win God's consent by being a righteous believer, Islamism envisions a roadmap to establish a totalitarian political system. And while Islam has existed since the early seventh century, Islamism has been around only since the early 20th century. Read more ...
Mustafa Akyol
Wednesday's bloody shootout at the American Consulate in Istanbul is still not totally solved. No organization claimed the attack, which left three Turkish policemen dead and two injured. But the evidence collected by the Turkish security forces so far makes it reasonable to assume that there was an Islamist motive in the mind of the attackers. Actually three of them died right on the spot, and the fourth one turned out to be a paid driver. So there is no interrogation-based information. But the police found out that one of the dead terrorists had traveled to Iran and Afghanistan. The other's father was arrested in 1999 for links with the shadowy “Turkish Hizbollah,” a Kurdish Islamist terror group. The general impression in the Turkish media is that the attackers were at least ideologically linked with al Qaeda. So, this seems to be a case of “Islamist terror.”
But is that an appropriate term at all?
Islamic versus Islamist:
I think, yes, it is. What I would object to would be an apparently similar but actually quite unalike term: “Islamic terrorism.” The difference between “Islamic” and “Islamist” is crucial, because while one refers to a religion, the other refers to an ideology. While Islam teaches the path to win God's consent by being a righteous believer, Islamism envisions a roadmap to establish a totalitarian political system. And while Islam has existed since the early seventh century, Islamism has been around only since the early 20th century. Read more ...
Source: Turkish Daily News
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