Boston Bombers Driven By Politics, Not Islam

In the wake of the Boston bombings, for which the motivations are still unclear, the connection between Islam and violence has surfaced again in the American media. Some voices on the American right have once again made it clear, as Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson put it critically, that they “regard terrorism and Islam as interchangeable.”

There are some understandable reasons for this grossly mistaken view. In the past two decades, Americans have been repeatedly targeted by terrorists who don't just happen to be Muslim, but also justify their carnage by referring to a particular Islamic concept called jihad. On the other hand, voices from the overwhelming majority of moderate Muslims, insisted that in its broadest sense jihad really means a “spiritual struggle” for a more noble soul — an explanation which was factually true, yet actually irrelevant.

The truth is more complex and nuanced. Yes, Islam, the second-largest religion in the world, carries a tradition of jihad, a term which implies a holy war. And yes, those Muslim extremists who want to kill as many Americans as possible refer to this tradition, proudly identifying themselves as jihadis, or “jihadists.” However, they don’t find real motivation in the classical Islamic texts written at least a millennium ago. Instead, their stimulus is rooted in ways in which they interpret — or misinterpret — current affairs in the modern world.

They are, in other words, driven by a political ideology that includes some religious references, rather than the religion itself.