Are there Christians in Islamic Terrorist Groups?

[ck4829]

"Though Americans may be a little fuzzy about identifying their deadliest enemies in the Middle East, they have few doubts that the chief demon-figures are solidly Muslim. Thirty or so years ago, Palestinian Arab terrorists and hijackers clearly represented the deadliest threat to the West, only to be replaced in the 1980s by Shi'ite groups like Hizbullah, and more recently by the still deadlier al-Qaeda. Behind these frightening names lurk the so-called bandit-states, like Syria, Iran, Libya, and (until recently) Iraq -- all Arab, with the obvious exception of Iran. The names may vary, but at first sight, the story seems to be a straightforward case of radical Islam versus the West. Ever since September 11, a whole academic growth industry has traced the Islamic origins of terrorism and fanaticism, from Quranic calls to jihad through the history of the Assassins - though authors offer the obligatory nod to the peaceful and tolerant nature of Islam as a religion.

Just when the picture starts to become clear, though, we notice some odd features about the Muslim threat, namely that substantial sections of it do not appear Muslim at all. For years after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, the public face of that nation's diplomacy was deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz, who was born with the distinctly Christian name Michael Yuhanna. Hafiz al-Asad, who made Syria a bastion of Arab radicalism and anti-Israel fervor, was an Alawite, a member of a secretive esoteric sect that has only tenuous Islamic credentials, and Alawites control every organ of the Syrian state. Asad himself was surrounded by non-Muslim counselors. British author William Dalrymple suggests that by the 1990s, five out of Asad's seven closest advisors were Christian.

Until recently, Christians were still more obvious in the ranks of the Palestinian movements challenging Israel. At least until the rise of the Muslim movement Hamas in 1987, most of the notorious terrorist militants were men of Christian origin, like George Habash, Wadi Haddad, and Nayef Hawatmeh. Through the 1970s, a great deal of blood was shed as Palestinians tried to force Israel to release one of its most important captives, Hilarion Capucci, a Melkite Catholic bishop in communion with the Vatican. Bishop Capucci had been arrested for smuggling weapons for the PLO. Today, the suave symbol of the Palestinian cause in the West is yet another Christian, Hanan Ashrawi. In Palestinian history especially, armed Arab militancy looks rather more like a crusade than a jihad."

http://hnn.us/articles/1640.html

I hope this does not amount to Anti-Religious Bigotry. As I have said before, I myself am a Muslim with a Christian family, but this was just too interesting to pass up.

[mike_c]

1. I think the answer has more to do with the term "terrorism..."

...than it has to do with religion. The trend these days is to label anyone who fights against the U.S. or it's allies, or who fights for causes immimical to U.S. corporate interests, a "terrorist." It's the latest way of demonizing those struggles and the people who wage them. Supporters of the Iraq war, for example, point to "all the terrorists who've been killed there" as a measure of the war's success, and even opponants of the war speak of Iraq as having become "a breeding ground for terrorism." What it has become is a breeding ground for local resistance to U.S. global dominance. The official newspeak for that is "terrorism." That brush is being applied so broadly that it's becoming impossible to really identify terrorists, let alone determine their religious affiliations.

[RaleighNCDUer]

2. Don't be silly. Not only are all terrorists Muslim,

but all Muslims are terrorists.

Shut up and drink your kool-aid.

[ck4829]

3. self-kick

[ck4829]

4. one more self-kick

[The Magistrate]

5. It Should Not Be Much Of A Surprise, Sir

Though the matter can be viewed much more clearly without the distraction of the spurious coinage "terrorism", and with a recognition of the seperate strands of activity lumped together under it.

Christian Arabs, begining at the start of the last century, played a role in the development of Arab Nationalism out of proportion to their numbers. One reason for this was that they were more likely to have had some Western education, and more friendly contact with the various Western interlopers, which gave them a better idea of developments in the larger world, and a better sense of its real threats, and the prevailing political doctrines that promised some salvation from it. Arab Palestinian resistance to the early stages of the Zionist enterprise, and later to Israel, being rooted in Arab Nationalism, therefore has always had a sizeable Christian Arab component. It has never been predominant, particularly not at the foot-soldier level, but it has certainly been present, particularly among the intellectual leadership.

The Ba'athist movement, being of the "modernizing fascist" strain, has from its outset encountered considerable resistance from Moslem traditionalists, and accordingly found much of its support among minorities unaffected by this attitude. Again, the greater contact with Western education has played an early role in the attachment of Arab Christians to it, as it is a wholly imported political strain, of Western origin though locally adapted. In the matter of Syria particularly, the minority status of the Alawite sect has required of Assad's family an especial attachment to other minorities within Syrian society, as a means of restricting the political power of the majority population. The "hang together lest we be hanged seperately" principle dictates such a policy, and it has proved effective.