Islam, Like Any Religion, Should Not Need Defending

The two young brothers who bombed the Boston Marathon carried out their act of terrorism that killed three people and injured over 260 because they wanted to “defend Islam from attack,” according to hospital-bed testimony from the only surviving brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. The people joyfully running on the streets and lined-up cheering along the route were not assaulting any religion, nor have been the prosecutors of the US-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as former president George W. Bush was at pains to point out, however disastrously misguided his military adventures were.

These two Muslim brothers in arms — the elder, Tamerlan, apparently leading and pressuring the younger, although he cannot defend what Dzhokhar, now facing the death penalty, tells investigators because he was gunned down by police and then run over by his sibling — gave their lives for a specious cause and in that they were fatally naive, absurdly and criminally vacuous.

To a logical mind, a set of supreme beliefs does not need defending; if it is worth believing in at all, it must stand alone, impervious to criticism or attack, neither of which bother it, or its disciples, all that much. That one’s life-philosophy is attacked by detractors should only serve to remind those who follow the ideology of how lofty and significant it is.

In the world’s most populous Muslim country, Indonesia, a group of vigilantes decided that Islam is, in fact, in need of defending, often with violence and the endangerment of public safety. They call themselves the Islamic Defenders’ Front, and are on good terms with the police and other authorities, organs of state that should know better than to let armed thugs decide what’s right or wrong, or indeed to police the capital, Jakarta. But the defenders and their acolytes are not really defending their religion, not that they know it, but their own morals, which are delicate and easily offended by the sight of someone enjoying themselves, particularly in bars and clubs, targets of the hardliners’ rage and which they have thrashed to evict the sinners and save their souls, even as they lose their own.

The Boston bombers, ethnic Chechens born in Kazakhstan, had been in the United States for over a decade, the elder boxing and a stay-at-home dad and the younger studying, and yet it appears that Tamerlan had difficulty assimilating into the culture, at one point declaring, “I don’t have a single American friend.” This sense of estrangement from his surroundings may have heightened his Muslim zealotry. Writing in The Guardian, the paper’s religion editor, Andrew Brown, said, “One of the things that nurtures fanaticism is a distance from the surrounding culture. That’s what makes you feel alienated and threatened for your beliefs. In milder form this syndrome produces “cults,” turning orthodox Hindus into Hare Krishnas. In pathological forms, it makes dangerous fanatics.”

We know all too well how easily enraged extremist followers of Islam can get, erupting in deadly violence at the sight of cartoons in newspapers or magazines, tales in books they’ve never read and never will (The Satanic Verses) and depictions in film or on television. As they vent their vile fury, people in the West look at the frenetic scenes and say to themselves: What is all the fuss about? One of the main titles of Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain is Defender of the Faith, and while the monarch appears to be deeply devout herself, she has no real defending to do of the Anglican faith. Were she to do so, Islam-style, the result would be ridicule.

The best reaction to harsh criticism is often no reaction at all. Let them at it — let them expend their energy futilely; they’ll soon learn there’s no merit it in and move on. To respond in such cases can be counterproductive. Is Islam really so very fragile and flaccid that it cannot withstand mere words and drawings and moving images? After all, religion is internal. It is from that which tests that strength can be gauged.

Islam is one of the world’s major beliefs, with an estimated 1.5 billion followers and the second-biggest global religion after Christianity, so why is it so insecure that for some, the hardline fringe, any denigration is met with volcanic outrage? Islam’s leaders, largely silent when Muslims slaughter the innocent in the name of Islam, have an innate responsibility, but one they are scandalously shirking, to stand up and denounce such enmity. They must teach and preach and tell the world that their religion is one of love and tolerance and peace, and that no one among them must take up arms in defence of it — and publicly excommunicate those who do, so that they can no longer act in the name of a religion they have been officially thrown out of.

Muhammad would surely agree.