Tenth International Conference on Religion & Spirituality in Society

Abstract

The brunt of the 9/11 terrorist attack was primarily borne by the Muslim communities around the globe when the United States, as an immediate response, declared the Global War on Terror to exterminate the Jihadist terrorist group “al-Qaeda,” who was responsible for the attack. In order to make sense of this violent manifestation of Islamic extremism, western societies’ primary response, as referred by Arun Kundani, was based on the culturalist approach which considered Islam to be inherently anti-modern and prone to violence. However, soon this approach gave way to the reformist outlook that the roots of Muslims terrorism lies in the radical interpretation of otherwise benign Islamic text. However, both approaches considered ideology to be sufficient enough to explain the root cause of terrorism violence, the first one focusing on Islam itself, while the second one on Islamist extremism. Since jihadist groups, like al-Qaida and ISIS, use Salafi doctrine to articulate their understanding of Islam, based on the second approach, a direct causal link has come to be assumed between Salafism and violent extremism. The purpose of this essay is to debate that although some of the key concepts of Salafist doctrine compared to classical Islamic teachings are radical, the mere holding of extremist ideas does not lead its adherents to commit terrorist violence because, like any other abstract theology, the nature of its practical manifestation is influenced by the combination of socio-economic and political factors that the second approach, as discussed above, fails to account for.