Terrorism and terrorists

Opinion articles in The Jakarta Post often share an angle on Indonesian Islamic terrorism: It is not Indonesian and it is not Islamic. Karen Armstrong's article Blame the politics, not the religion of Islam(The Jakarta Post, July 13), offers a similar view of international Islamic terrorism.

This heads off the obvious question "what is wrong with Islam?", but results in questionable arguments. For example, she says the term "Wahhabi terrorism" is inadmissible because most Wahhabis do not commit acts of terror. In fact, it would be right to refer to "Wahhabi terrorists" if they were motivated by Wahhabi ideology, regardless of whether terrorists were a majority of the Wahhabi community.

According to her we should not use the term "Islamic terrorism" because terrorism is not caused by Islam itself, and even if it is, calling it so makes Muslims more likely to become terrorists.

That Islam does not cause terrorism is true in that religions do not act. Ideas exist in the minds of men and women. Whether they are dangerous depends on what men and women do as a result of them.

The essential idea of Islam is that there is a right way to serve God, which is to follow the rules of Prophet Mohammad. Now in truth there might be many ways to serve God, or there might be no God at all. But in the eyes of Muslims, people who believe such things are on the wrong track, or are wandering in the spiritual desert.

This idea creates at least two clear dangers. First, the laws of Mohammad are designed for Arabian society 1,400 years ago. Muslims may fail to adapt them to the modern world. The result in Muslim-governed nations will be social tension and economic stagnation. In non-Islamic states the result will be difficulty integrating with the rest of society.

Second, Muslim governments may be undemocratic. If the law of the Koran is the law of God, it is risky to consult the people, in case their will contradicts the Koran. The result is the exclusion of anyone other than devout Muslims from the governing process and intolerance of dissent.

Many Muslims avoid these dangers, adapt to the modern world and tolerate non-Muslims. For example, they may say "I am not dancing for religious reasons, but other people are welcome to dance if they want to." Other Muslims, such as those in the government of Indonesia, may say "We are not dancing so nobody is allowed to dance for a month as a mark of respect for us." Their concept of tolerance is that non-Muslims must do the same as them, but they must never do the same as non-Muslims.

A literal and intolerant interpretation of the Koran as God- given is the basic ideology for fundamentalist terrorists. They resort to violence when they cannot impose their version of Islamic law through political channels. Muslims who follow a pragmatic and tolerant version of Islam may wish that the extremist branch would wither and die. But this does not alter the fact that they come from the same root.

JOHN HARGREAVES Jakarta